Ghost ARK
by Inferni
Summary: Tails is a fox renewed. Cosmo is back in his life, his unborn child is safe, and everything is how it should have been had fate not separated them. But when an old derelict reappears, so too do the fears of a former foe. Book 2 of the Bloodlines Saga.
1. And the Heavens Darken

_Author's Notes:_

I'm kind of intimidated by the thought of writing this. One of my greatest fears when doing any sort of fiction is that I won't be able to finish what I begin. The ambition I'm taking with turning the Strings of Time into the start of a series makes me wonder if, even when I finish one book, will I ever complete the full set?

Know that what motivates me to write is Passion. There's of course you, the readers, and your longer comments often get me eager to jump back into writing the next chapter. Keep talking, just knowing I have fans gets me in the authoring mood. I was also passionate about Tails x Cosmo shipping, which caused me to start this entire thing, but writing the first book has relieved a great deal of that tension. Now I want to move on, but there's still some loose ends that need tying up: namely, Mephiles. That's the new goal with this set of short novels/stories/fanfics: to turn those loose ends into their own series of stories. But while I find Mephiles to be a fascinating mastermind and chessmaster, will I really maintain that fascination for multiple stories?

Guess we'll find out.

Something that bears mentioning before we jump in: This is not just about Tails x Cosmo anymore. Oh sure, I'm definitely going to keep them in the story, and they'll have their moments along with the rest (It'll also keep ME interested… hopefully). But the spotlight of the story is getting focused to a more general focus and theme, with highlights on suspense and mystery (And of course little sprinkles of my desert-dry humor here and there). P:

Bloodlines Saga:  
1. [The Strings of Time]  
2. [Ghost ARK]  
3. [Project Gateway]  
4. ?

* * *

**Ghost ARK**

The sky was filled with jewels, pinpricks of light that poked holes in the deep blue canopy that covered their world of Mobius. Dusk was ending, and as the dark shades of azure continued to darken into the shadow of night, more and more of the sparks lit up until it seemed a black sea of candles swam above their heads.

Amy carefully rolled out the checkered blanket on the hilltop, the bright squares maroon and mustard in the dark. "It's so lovely out tonight," she mused as Cream and Cheese sat down on it with her. "I wish Sonic would stop standing us up at Stargazing."

"It wouldn't be like Sonic to stay in any single place for more than a minute," said Tails, who was trying to set up a telescope with Cosmo's help. "Short of him sleeping there, anyway. Though the thought of a sleep-running hedgehog is something I wouldn't push out of my mind…"

"Next time I won't give him a choice then," said the pink hedgehog, sternly folding her arms. "I'll skip asking and just tie him to a tree."

"I don't think the tree would like that…" said Cosmo hesitantly. "Tails, where does this piece go?" she then asked, pointing to one of the tripod legs in her hand.

Cream blinked once and turned her head to the seedrian. "Since when did you start calling him just 'Tails', Cosmo-san?"

"Uh… Er…" Cosmo turned a little pink under the eyes, taking a step away from the blanket out of reflex.

Amy smiled evilly. "Don't be shy about it, Cosmo. _I've_ noticed. It's not quite 'honey', but I can understand you taking baby steps."

The seedrian turned scarlet. Tails remained oblivious as he finished the last of the calibrations. "Alright, that should be everything. You want to try it first, flower?"

Amy's sinister grin only cracked wider as Cosmo eagerly agreed, shy of sharing her feelings as ever and trying oh so hard to avoid talking about them. Tails' own term of endearment hadn't escaped her notice either, he had on and off been using 'Flower' as much as her real name for the past nine months since they'd gotten back from the battles with the Metarex. She was happy for them, yes, but she was also jealous they'd gotten so far ahead in less than a year than what she'd been trying for multiple.

"All I see is a lot of brown, Tails" said the seedrian as she stared down the scope. The kitsune looked over her shoulder and stifled a snicker as he saw her line of sight point straight into a thicket of trees at the base of the hill. Instead, he gentle tilted it up until it again aligned with the heavens. A gleeful squee escaped the plant girl's lips, as she began to swivel the telescope around and take in all the different views. "I saw a lot of these in space, but they're all so prett-"

Her sudden stop gave Tails pause. "What's wrong Cosmo? Is there something on the lens?"

The girl raised her head from the optics and stared at the place in the sky she had been gazing. "Tails…" she asked coldly calm while raising a finger to point, "What is that?"

The kitsune, hedgehog, and rabbit all followed the directions and stared into the night sky. There, in a dark patch between the stars, was another light. Unlike the others, though, it was a deep shade of blue barely visible against the darkness, and pulsed as if it were alive.

"I… don't know." He answered honestly, folding his arms and tilting his head at the anomaly.

The four mobians weren't the only ones noticing the foreign body in the night sky. Several miles away at his "secret" base, Doctor Eggman was just as perplexed about the strange energy source his sensors were screaming klaxons at him about.

"Eggman-sama!" yelled Bokkun as loud as the little android could over sirens (which wasn't very much), his hands clamped over his oversized ears. "Can we please turn off the alarms?"

"My receivers are burning out!" shrieked Bocoe as he aimlessly ran by, smoke trailing from his head.

The self-proclaimed genius snorted and mumbled something about "updated assistants" before flipping a pair of toggles, the sirens going silent less than a second afterwards. He briefly indulged vanity from the praise of his mechanical minions before turning back to the monitor and the odd readings. There was a large amount of irregular gravity going on up in orbit above them; like some sort of singularity was pulling things toward it where there was nothing.

His curiosity piqued, Eggman swung around his chair and pointed and finger up in the air, shouting "Activate the Egg-o-scope!"

"Yes, Eggman-sama!" shouted Decoe, Bocoe, and Bokkun all at once and snapping a salute before frantically scurrying off to their stations. The mechanical minions ran into one another more than once during this attempt, sparking insults that they continued to yell at each other even while working their respective controls. The Doctor ignored them, jogging with a wide berth over to another console as a periscope dropped over said station. Grabbing the fold-out handles, he shoved his Lens-covered eyes into the scope and started panning around, his wide mustache tickling the bottom of the observatory device.

"Eggman-sama!" shouted Decoe from over at his own console. "Gravity fluctuations are leveling off! The anomaly appears to have stabilized into a single mass!

Ivo acknowledged his assistant's report, finally locating the space the gravity well had been emanating from… and gasped.

Back on the hilltop; the four friends watched for a few more seconds as the azure pulse began to slow. With one, last, dark flare, it then faded completely, leaving something behind that they couldn't make out even while squinting.

"Let me have a look," said Tails to his love, pulling the optic up to his eyes after Cosmo had made room. He had to swivel around a bit like she had before bringing the object into view. His hands reached out and twisted a set of knobs on the side of the telescope until the zoomed in entity came into focus, a half-sphere of shattered asteroid drifting in a new orbit in the dark heavens above.

"What is it, Tails-san?" asked Cream innocently from the checkered blanket.

The kitsune blinked a few times to make sure he was seeing things, then slowly pulled away and stared up in surpise, shock, and a bit foreboding.

"It's… The ARK."

* * *

ALTERNATE SCENE:

Amy smiled evilly. "Don't be shy about it, Cosmo. _I've_ noticed. It's not quite 'honey', but I can understand you taking baby steps."

Cream snickered. "Heh… _Baby_…"


	2. Into the Abyss

"Hold on a sec… You're telling me the ARK just showed up in the sky and nobody knows why?"

Tails shrugged helplessly. Sonic let out a puzzled noise and leaned back against the wall of his sidekick's workshop. Amy and Cream sat atop a set of crates to the left of him, Knuckles standing with folded arms and his ever-serious look by the garage door. Cosmo was the only one by the kitsune, sitting on a small box a few feet from him.

"I would say Eggman was involved," Tails put out tentatively, "there's still probably a ton of untouched weapons leftover on the colony. But it just doesn't seem his style. Plus, I don't think he has the kind of technology to open a portal that large to Earth; it took a Chaos Emerald and the energy of the Eclipse Cannon just to open a tear last time. I also doubt he would risk the possibility of total temporal suspension."

"Eggman's risked more than that before," said Amy. "Don't you remember Chaos? Or the first time we went to the Ark? That overweight egghead's caused more near apocalypses than he's ever come close to taking over the world!"

"I'm with Tails," Knuckles spoke up. "I don't see Eggman as the one behind this."

Amy's brows slanted as she put her hands on her hips and turned to the Echidna from over the rim of the crate. "Whadda'you know? How many times has he tricked you into thinking he's a victim in half the schemes that had him as the cause?"

Knuckles growled in anger, raising his fists while Amy patted her Piko-Piko Hammer with violence flickering in her eyes. Cosmo and Cream immediately jumped in to try and avoid the impending conflict with pleas for peace. All four were interrupted when someone began banging on the garage door. Without even waiting in time for an answer, it was thrown open as a little, dark blue robo flew in cackling in a high pitch tone.

"I'm baaack!" shrieked Bokkun as he touched down in the middle of the heroes' meeting, Knuckles and Amy blinking a foot apart with weapons raised, as well as Cosmo and Cream with their hands around the formers' respective ankles. The messenger robo tossed his bag down and hefted a mustard-coloured Television out of it and onto the ground. "And the great Eggman wants to talk! So listen up! This messagebox is two-way!"

Before objections could be raised, static flared across the screen and resolved itself into the face of a bald-headed man complete with oversized mustache. "O ho ho ho ho!" laughed the Doctor in his trademark guffaw, at Amy and Knuckles' imminent battle to the death or simply because of the demands of his ever-constant ego, they'd probably never know.

"Hey, Eggman." said Sonic, pushing off the wall and giving a thumbs-up to the screen. "What's up?"

Ivo stopped laughing almost instantly. "Eh, Sonic?" he asked, his hairless brows furrowing. "What are you doing here? Bokkun, did you deliver this to the wrong house?!"

His messenger robo stiffened in response, his head swiveling around. "What? Er- No! This is the right place, Eggman-sama! I'm certain!"

"Then where's Tails?" his master demanded, looking at the monitor at different angles as if it would give him some sort of better view. "I don't see him anywhere!"

Half-way across the room, said twin-tailed fox sighed. After a few seconds he called out: "Present, Eggman."

"What?!" yelled the Doctor, "Bokkun, turn me around!" The android flailed his hands in surprise a few seconds before obeying, spinning the monitor around and shoving it over and almost into the kitsune's face. "Ah, Tails! Good to see you! I don't suppose you've noticed our new satellite too?"

"What's it to you Eggman?!" yelled Amy before Tails could respond, getting her ankles free from Cream and running over to Bokkun's new location. "I bet you were the one who brought it over from Earth!" she continued, jabbing an accusatory finger into the monitor while raising the Piko-Piko Hammer with the spare hand as if to strike.

Ivo let out another boisterous series of laughs, the pink hedgehog's eyebrow forming a V in response. "Why, I'm delighted that you think me so capable! Alas, it wasn't I who brought the colony over from Chris' world. Not even my magnificent genius has yet to understand how it was done… In fact, that's actually the reason I sent my messenger robo over here. I'm going up there to find out."

Tails exchanged looks with Sonic. "You could have just sent that in a message," the former said. "Why bother with actual conversation? Why even tell us, for that matter? It's not like we have any reason to stop you."

"Because the ARK is massive!" said Eggman, putting his hands up for emphasis. "We barely saw a fraction of its facilities the last time we were there! I could spend months, even years exploring it, and still not know all of the secrets aboard that my grandfather left behind! And if someone or something is behind this, it might also know about the Eclipse Cannon. If that thing starts leveling cities, I won't have anything to build my empire from! I need haste, and that, regretfully, means I need more help."

"More?" asked Knuckles, walking into view of the monitor with Cosmo and Cream.

"Shadow has already approached me seeking passage to the ARK. This is obviously of more concern to him than most. Naturally I agreed, he knows the colony better than anyone still alive today."

Sonic tapped a finger to his chin for a few seconds. Then: "The only time you ever ask for all of our help is when the World's ending. You don't look that desperate yet, Eggman."

The fat man's head swiveled over toward Sonic. "I'm not asking for 'all' your help. I'm asking for Tails'. You think I'd actually trust you in the vulnerable interior of my ships, or to be alone with Knuckles after all the times I've duped him?"

"Hey!" shouted the Master Emerald's guardian.

"Case in point," said Eggman. "Anyway, I need someone with actual brainpower. This mission will require a lot of data mining in the Ark's memory banks and systems along with the searching, which only makes one person in this room of any use to me."

Above the monitor, Bokkun sniveled a little.

Tails folded his arms. "While I may not be quite as smart as you, Eggman," he said, "I'm certainly not stupid, nor so quickly duped. I'm not nearly as good a fighter as Sonic or Knuckles, and it wouldn't be the first time you've tried to take hostages." Plus, he still wasn't particularly fond of Shadow after having beaten the kitsune half to death and almost succeeding at an attempt to kill Cosmo. But kitsune wasn't about to bring grudges into his argument.

The doctor groaned. "Hmph. Fine. You can take a companion. But still not Sonic or Knuckles! I stand by former reasoning on that issue."

The twin-tailed fox tilted his head down in thought. That still wasn't much help from a tactical standpoint. He had little doubt Shadow would side with Eggman over them if a schism formed, and the black hedgehog was the most powerful fighter he knew. Still, two was a better deterrent than one-

"I'll go," said Cosmo, standing next to Tails.

That snapped the kitsune out of his thoughts. "Er- Cosmo, you've never even been to the ARK. Shouldn't you- Shouldn't someone else go?" He changed quickly, his thoughts unwillingly drifting back to a certain ultimate life form he didn't really want to risk her around…

The seedrian turned her head to his. "You and the others have told me enough stories that I know most of what happened back on Chris-san's world, Tails. And I can be of use too; I've picked up a little from helping you on the Tornado upgrades."

Yeah, 'a little'. But damnit, he always did have trouble saying no to those big, persuasive, blue eyes. "Yeah, okay," he finally agreed reluctantly, scratching the back of his head.

Almost all of his friends instantly started voicing that this was a bad idea and that more of them should come. Eggman drowned them all out. "Excellent!" he exclaimed, "I'll be over in- Well, now!"

The television erupted in a small explosion, smoke billowing out everywhere. When it cleared to sooty and singed fur, the Doctor was standing dramatically atop the palms of Decoe and Bocoe. "Dr. Eggman-sama is here!" the two robots proclaimed while Bokkun and said Doctor laughed maniacally. For everyone else, a bead of sweat just rolled down their respective heads.

"How… did you do that, Eggman-san?" asked Cream.

"Trade Secret!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Now then, I hope you two are ready to go posthaste! Busy, busy, busy!"

The heroes had barely recovered from the overdramatized entrance before there was a thunderous quake, knocking over a few crates and causing Eggman to fall off from his perch and flat on his face. "Idiots!" he yelled, jumping back up and getting in the faces of his assistants. "You call that a 'successfully tested' auto-pilot?! Get out there before I rebuild you both as Dishwashers!"

The robotic duo covered their heads in fear, sprinting out the still open garage door and over to where a very large, oval-shaped shuttle had embedded itself into the ground. The decal was silver with red and yellow trimming, and Eggman's signature logo was splashed in white over the side facing them. A ramp in the back slammed down, and the two robots scurried in. A dozen or so seconds later, the ship pulled itself out of the ground, hovered up to the garage, spun around, and landed once more with the ramp facing them. It dropped open again to reveal the interior of the hold, Decoe and Bocoe saying "Ta-daaa!" with their hands open and pointed inward.

Ivo snorted, taking large steps as he boarded the craft, turning around at the top of the boarding ramp and calling the kitsune's name. "Two minutes, Eggman," Tails responded, walking to the back of the garage where another plane was covered in a pale yellow tarp. Before he got to it, however, Sonic pulled him aside.

"Tails, you sure about this?" the blue hedgehog asked with apparent concern. "It's not like Eggman to play nice. He's gotta be up to something."

"I know," agreed the twin-tailed fox, surprising his friend. "I don't trust him anymore than you. But an opportunity like this lets us keep an eye on him if he should try something."

The kitsune indicated they keep walking, heading over to the obscured plane. "Here's what I'm thinking: Cosmo and I will stick around Eggman and watch him. If things on the ARK should go bad, I'll contact Amy over our communicators. She'll round up everyone aboard her fighter and bring you all in for support. Sound good?"

Sonic smiled. "Wow, guess I underestimated you. Yeah, that's a solid plan." He paused, scratching the back of his head. "Just… Be careful, okay? Usually I'm the one putting myself in danger, because I like it and I don't enjoy seeing others there."

Tails smiled back. "Yeah. Okay Sonic." The blue blur gave him a thumbs up before zooming off to harass the Doctor before he left, zipping by Cosmo and Cream.

"So, you'll take care of it then?" asked the seedrian, "You remember the instructions?"

"One cup of water every other day," recited Cream, "Just enough to keep the soil moist, no more and no less."

Cosmo gave the rabbit a hug, Cheese chaoing as he joined in as well. "Thanks Cream-san. I know you'll take good care of it for me and Tails while we're gone."

Behind her, the mentioned Kitsune groaned as he kept pushing the still covered plane out of the garage and up to the boarding ramp. Eggman took a break from his banter with Sonic to look questionably at the craft. "Really, Tails, is that necessary? Judging by the size it's not even space-worthy."

The twin-tailed fox stopped to wipe his brow. "Just trust me Eggman," he said flatly.

"Coming from someone who won't even return the favor." Commented the Doctor snidely. Ivo indicated his head toward the plane, Decoe and Bocoe running over in response and each grabbing a wing from behind to push.

"Put your back into it!" yelled Bocoe to his gold-plated counterpart after the plane hadn't moved despite a few seconds of struggle-laden shoves.

"Look who's talking!" shouted Decoe back at the silver one. "You couldn't even lift a rice cake to your mouth!"

"You said you'd never talk about that in public again!" hollered Bocoe, and on and on went their banter until the plane (somehow) made it into the hold.

"That it?" asked Eggman as Tails joined him at the entrance to the ship, Cosmo arriving only a few seconds later. "Or should I wait for you to get your refrigerator too? How about a bathtub while we're at it?"

The kitsune just shook his head with eyes pointed up while he walked inside. The seedrian's own head tilted behind him as she tried and failed to understand the joke. With all of them aboard, there was a hum of hydraulics as the ramp once again rose up and hissed shut. Grass and dirt blew about beneath the craft as it rose up, and with a thrust from the boosters sped up and into the sky, and the dark void that lay beyond the white clouds.


	3. Genius & Jealously

As Eggman continued to chew out Decoe and Bocoe over improper settings from the cockpit, Tails watched their ascent out a starboard-side window. The clouds below continued to shrink as the shuttle passed through the upper atmosphere, blue fading to the black, star-speckled canopy of space.

"Just like stargazing, huh?" said Cosmo, coming up from behind him and leaning on his shoulder.

"I suppose," the kitsune agreed, tilting his head into hers while one of his tails unconsciously wrapped around the seedrian's waist. "Still not as pretty as you though, flower."

Cosmo giggled a little, then grew gravely quiet for a few seconds. "I'm worried Tails…" she finally said, "You don't think it's… _him_, do you?"

There was no need for the name. The kitsune had considered the scenario a few times already, though he hadn't brought it up to Sonic or his other friends. Aside from Cosmo, none of them knew his full history with the mysterious being calling itself Mephiles the Dark. And to this day, he still felt the stain of the bargain he had made in another time, despite its supposedly happy resolution.

"I don't know, Cosmo." Tails finally said. "I certainly haven't ruled out the possibility." Considering it again, it definitely was. Just because the crystallized fiend hadn't shown his face in three quarters of a year didn't mean he wasn't there, watching, pulling and pushing with subtle influence. Hell, it could have been only a few seconds to that ancient of a being. And the kitsune could think of no other who could move such a massive object as the ARK through dimensional barriers.

Eggman interrupted these musings as the self-proclaimed genius came grumbling out of the cockpit, mumbling something about damaged cognitive processors. His head slowly worked around the room, drawing Tails' attention as he seemed to search for something the kitsune could not perceive. Then, suddenly he spoke up: "I don't remember inviting you along for this expedition."

A grate in the ceiling clanged and fell, followed shortly by the descent of a lithe, feminine form. Landing with the grace of an acrobat, Rouge the bat stood up from her crouch, a smile in the corner of her face. "You didn't. I invited myself."

Tails blinked a few time, but for some reason wasn't surprised. Rouge did have a habit of stalking Eggman, stowing away on his vessels and spying on him inside his own base.

The Doctor snorted. "Whatever," he responded, waving a hand in dismissal, "I don't care. Just stay out of my way." She obliged, stepping aside as he walked past her and over to the still-covered aircraft in the back of the hold. "So Tails, going to tell me what's so useful about your toy plane that it merits bringing, or am I going to have to take it apart myself and find out?"

The kitsune sighed, shaking his head as he uncoiled his tail from Cosmo's waist, pulling away from the seedrian and walking over by Eggman. Lifting into the air with the aid of his namesakes, he grabbed the front of the tarp and pulled it slowly back to the rear of the plane before depositing it in a heap behind the aircraft.

Underneath the fabric and now revealed for all to see was another Tornado, though smaller than its former incarnations. It had the same blue-and-yellow paint job as the Hyper, but a more technological look akin to the X-Tornado. There wasn't a canopy, but instead the two seats possessed windshields that seemed more decorative than practical. The tail of the plane curved up past the second seat to make room for the single propulsion jet below it, and was mounted with a fat energy cannon whose barrel was rimmed with a pair of rings. The wheels were each surrounded by a booster pack and locked into place by clamps at the front edge of the wings, which were mono now rather than bi like the Tornado 2. At the front, a bazooka stuck out from under the hood and atop the propellerless engine, with "P-3b" stamped across the side of the latter.

"I call her the Tornado 3," said Tails, hovering over and dropping into the front cockpit. "It's designed after the X-Tornado, but as a lighter and more versatile version. The armament isn't as good as the Hyper's, but the payload is still quite substantial considering the reduced size.

"Not bad," said another hitherto unknown occupant, the kitsune's head snapping to the left. In a shadowy corner there, a patch of the darkness stepped forward and resolved itself into the form of an equally dark hedgehog with red eyes and highlights on his spines.

Tails' eyelids slipped down a few centimeters, but other than that he did nothing. Shadow wasn't quite as good at stealth as fighting, but he came by being a loner honestly and his fur color definitely helped. If he didn't want to be bothered or seen, there was a pretty good chance he wouldn't be. It still troubled the kitsune that he hadn't noticed him once, though. But then again, Tails hadn't noticed Rouge either.

Shadow didn't notice or acknowledge those feelings. He continued to slowly walk up to the Tornado 3, pausing next to Eggman as he folded his arms in inspection. Then: "Like the Doctor, however, I fail to see a point in bringing it. You have taken into account where we are going, correct?"

All too gleeful to prove the ultimate life form wrong, Tails pressed two buttons on his control panel and flipped a safety toggle. The console beeped once, a feminine voice saying: "Cyclone Walker Mode: Activated." The plane buzzed and whined, the tail snapping off from the back and splitting, spinning down around the jet. The clamps holding the wheels in place disengaged, lowering to the ground as the rear end of the wheels connected with the now reversed tail wings. Another hiss of hydraulic pressure, and the jet disengaged from the back of the plane entirely, rotating down and bringing the now reverse-jointed legs along as it locked into the bottom of the Tornado. As the walker stood on its new limbs, the wings split open and began retracting section by section into the hull, a plate snapping over the opening once they had fully withdrawn.

"Oh ho!" said Eggman, Shadow remaining silent but a smirk forming at the corner of his mouth. The fat man walked down the short length of the transformed plane, inspecting his rival engineer's work and finding himself grudgingly impressed. "Versatile indeed. I wasn't aware there was anyone else with the IQ needed to build mecha. Back on Earth, anything G.U.N. made remotely like it was just copied from me!"

The Doctor didn't even give Tails time to acknowledge the compliment he'd given. Turning around while flexing his fingers against each other, he stalked over to a control panel near the cockpit door, saying: "However, you're not the only one with the brains to build a mobile weapons platform! Behold the work of a true evil genius: the Egg Walker!"

Inputting a short code into the console, there was a hiss below deck, two half-circular plates sliding apart a few feet from where Eggman stood. Another platform rose to take its place, carrying a modified Eggmobile atop it. The stunted wings and engine spike had been removed, the internal missile racks stripped to make way for a thick plate of red rust-coloured armor that stretched across the front and sides of the pod, yet still leaving an open center for the green lens below the windshield to fit through. A pair of large, high-powered servo legs had been attached just below the caution-tape line, the lower portions of which having been rerouted with a jet engine on the back in a set of wide ankle pads just above the feet. For weapons, a large cannon with an energy stripper clip protruding out the top was mounted on the right of the pod. Also, a homing blaster that had a pair of rings circling the gun barrel (much likes Tails' own) sat raised and to the rear-left side of the Egg Walker's rim, where it could easily fire over a pilot's shoulder.

The Doctor rubbed his hands gleefully before jumping into the mecha, leaping hands first over the rear edge like a vaulting horse. Leaning on his right arm and with his left hand still on the yoke, he grinned deviously under the king of handlebar mustaches. "To the judges then!" he exclaimed, looking between Shadow, Rouge, and Cosmo. "Who takes first place in best Walker design?"

The bat tilted her head, smirking before answering first. "Why even ask? Everyone knows that _you're_ the best genius around, Doctor. It's not even a _contest_."

"Sarcasm not accepted!" proclaimed Eggman, "That's one for me! Shadow, care to settle the vote?"

The black hedgehog let loose a smirk of his own, coupled with an amused snort. "I don't think so, Doctor. The fox has put himself together quite a machine, I wouldn't put a wager on yours or his in a straight-up fight."

That surprised Tails. He'd always pictured Shadow as unfriendly as could be, with no respect for the kitsune. It certainly weakened his ability to keep holding a near year-old grudge.

Eggman groaned. "Well that ruins it then," he said, turning his head to Tails. "It's already rather obvious who your girlfriend will vote for. But I think we can all agree that, despite the lack of professional opinion, the Egg Walker is superior to your Cyclone in all-"

A short "Hah!" interrupted the genius's boast. Peering over the windshield, Ivo spotted Cosmo with arms crossed below the front of his mecha. "Superior?" she said with a raised eyebrow, "I helped Tails while he built the Tornado 3. He spent probably more time on it than the other tornados combined."

Behind his opaque glasses, Eggman blinked. "Er—What?"

"Almost everything you build ends up exploding!" shouted the Seedrian, now repeatedly stabbing the front of the Egg Walker with a finger. "Who gave you the right to call Tails' work inferior? Well you don't have it! You-"

The girl suddenly stopped, moaning as she grabbed her stomach. The kitsune was out of the Cyclone's cockpit in record time, immediately by her side. "Cosmo?" he asked gently. "What's wrong? Are you alright?"

"I'm…" she started, "Oooh… I'll _be_ fine," correcting herself. "Lunch isn't passing through well."

The girl got back on her feet, Tails backing off at her insistence. "Eggman," she said, "I don't suppose you have a toilet aboard, do you?"

Still blinking, the Doctor pointed his left hand to a door over by the cockpit. "Thanks," she returned, quickly heading off toward the indicated portal.

It had no sooner closed than Ivo exploded into a noise something between "ACK" and "YEESH". "What the hell happened to the sad little plant girl," he continued to shout, exemplifying innocence by putting his palms together and resting them on his cheek, "who wouldn't raise her voice to a flower?! I don't ever remember seeing that kind of fire from anyone except Amy!" Eggman then turned to his rival genius, his rant still running. "Since when did YOU manage to incite in her that kind of passion?"

This time it was Tails' turn to blink in surprise. Was it true? He thought back to the time of the metarex, the first time he'd met Cosmo. For the most part, she had been just that: afraid, alone, and depressingly low in self-esteem. But he'd still seen bravery in her even then, a girl willing who'd lost everything and still pressed on, trying to save others from her loss and build a brighter future for the galaxy. He'd been impressed with her determination and perseverance, but hadn't realized that extended all the way into infatuation until they'd been trapped together far beneath surface of a world dying without its planet egg.

But that still didn't answer the question. To do that, he thought more recently, to the months of Mobias passing in the company of mutual love: A spring of restored life with the return of the planet egg, Cosmo nurturing flowers and trees in the hills outside his home while he designed a greenhouse for her. A summer ripe with fruit and nature's bounty, playing volleyball with their friends and laughing after Knuckles punctured yet another ball with his namesakes. A fall of renewal and decline, watching the trees shed their leaves and fall dormant as the plant that was to be his own child grew ever bigger within its pot.

And then he realized that, yes, it had been he who'd restored Cosmo's courage. That fire, that drive had always been there, it had just waned with her happiness under the despair of years stained with tragedy. Tails had returned both with home, family, and friends. He'd given his love her _life_ back… And in more ways than one.

"The ARK is nearly within docking range!" said Decoe over the intercom, scattering Tails' thoughts. "Boarding will commence in just a few minutes!"

Eggman, who'd never even expected a response to his rhetorical question, was fiddling with some of the controls on the Egg Walker when the transmission came through. "Well," he said, making a steeple of his fingers and once again glancing between his cohorts, "looks like we're about to get underway. Any last thoughts before going ashore?"

Rouge had one. "I don't see why the mechanical toys are necessary. Last time we were here, the ARK was almost entirely empty except for less than a half dozen security droids and the Biolizard. Shouldn't it be just the way we left it?"

The Doctor's focus shifted to Tails and the Cyclone behind the kitsune, saying with a grin: "Oh, I certainly hope not."


	4. Breadcrumbs

The long silence of the ARK was broken with a heavy hiss of hydraulics and air, the double-layered airlock sliding twice open. Dim lighting only provided by red luminescent circuits between wall plates was barely enough to make the two mecha visible as they strode in side-by-side. Eggman, of course, piloted the Egg Walker, while Tails drove the Cyclone with Cosmo, now feeling better, in the spare seat behind him. Behind them, Shadow and Rouge followed as the door slid shut once they were all through. Decoe, Bocoe, and Bokkun had all been left behind to watch the ship, just in case the space colony wasn't as abandoned as it still appeared to be.

The party of five paused only a moment before continuing down the entryway, maintaining the formation of walkers in front and those on foot behind. The clang of metal footfalls echoed around them in the otherwise complete silence, adding an unpleasant sense of eeriness that pressed in on their senses like the lack of light strangling their vision.

Another set of doors and they arrived in the boarding station, a larger room with a few more passages that branched off further into the space colony. Eggman directed his mecha over to a counter on their right, not even pausing as it crashed through the side rather than waiting to go around. Not giving a chance for complaints from his cohorts about a lack of subtly, the Doctor maneuvered over to a console on the remaining portion of counter. The old device reacted to another's approach for the first time in decades, buzzing in a low key as a holographic interface materialized before it.

Stretching his long fingers, Ivo typed a few short keystrokes on the input device made of light. "Alright," he began, turning his attention to the other four, "Let's consider how to go about this. I propose we head for the central control room first; it has the most direct access to the security network aboard the ARK as well as most of the database. If whatever was responsible for bringing the colony into our Space-Time is sentient and still aboard, that is where they are most likely to be."

Shadow nodded. "Sound, Doctor. But there are many ways to reach the central control room, and some may be blocked from a lack of maintenance over the years. The last time I returned to the ARK and was headed for there to wait for you, I had to backtrack more than once due to collapsed or blocked passageways."

"That's why I'm accessing what I can of the database from here," returned Eggman, once again typing into the hologram, "to see how many routes we can- Hmm?"

Tails tilted his head as the Doctor scratched his own. "This is… odd." said the self-proclaimed genius. "According to the station logs, the system archives were accessed just a few hours ago."

"By who?" questioned Shadow, the black hedgehog suddenly alert as he quickly jumped over the counter and looked at the screen from beside the Egg Walker. "What were they looking for?"

"The data is password-protected," said Eggman, his hairless brows furrowing. "But that didn't stop me last time." He typed in the familiar letters: M – A – R – I – A. "Access… Denied? How? Gerald never used anything else as a password… Someone must have changed it."

The Doctor growled as he began typing faster. "Fine then, I'll just revert back to hacking. Try the Eggscrambler 2.0, you lousy administration network. Aaaand… Success!" He stopped typing suddenly, lowering his face over the Egg Walker and closer to the screen.

"Destruction through Perfection," Ivo quoted from the monitor.

"What?" asked Shadow.

"It's the password," said Eggman. "Bit long for me, and I'm not sure what it means or who would use it, but whatever. Let's see what our intruder was looking at."

He pressed a key a few times, his finger halting as his eyes dilated behind opaque lenses. "I… Don't believe it."

"How many more times are you planning on being surprised today?" asked Rouge sarcastically from over the desk.

Amazingly, Eggman ignored her as he pressed the key a few more times. "It's… It's another diary. From my Grandfather."

Shadow jumped up on the right side of the Walker, crouching as Rouge joined the two of them seconds later on the left. None of them even noticed Tails as he brought the Cyclone clanking up behind so that he and Cosmo could also read the text now slowly scrolling up the screen:

_My name is Gerald Robotnik._

_I write this second diary as both a backup and as personal memoirs, one to record my research and ideas upon for future members of the scientific community also looking to benefit mankind. My team and I are about to begin on a new assignment aboard the space colony ARK: Project Shadow. The ambition of the project is immense; to discover the secret of biological immortality is a dream that has been chased in futility as far back as historical records go. Like chasing one's own shadow, hence the name._

_But we have quite the budget: the funding is coming directly from the government, and apparently they aren't even applying a cap to it. Normally, I'd have passed it off. The possibilities of such technology lean toward immoral capabilities, and if there is one thing I have always strived for it is to make all of my creations better humanity, never to undermine it. But I have a Granddaughter. She means the world to me… And she is dying._

_The Doctors call it "NIDS": Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. Between my own research on the disease and the confirmations of other medical experts, there is no known cure, and immensely unlikely there will be one in what time she has left. But Project Shadow is about completely defying death, in any and all forms. The data gathered from our research would provide exactly what is needed to create a vaccine, and that is an opportunity that I simply cannot afford to let pass by._

_We begin the initial phase tomorrow. But there is something that I still have on my mind, something I am having trouble putting behind me. One of my colleagues and I had a disagreement over this endeavor, with him refusing to work on the project and trying to get me not to as well. He said that, "perfection is an envied thing, but also dangerous. For if you make a being perfect, what use does it have for the rest of us?" His logic is sound, but he also doesn't have a life riding on the line. Still, it makes me think: could he be right? By creating an ultimate being, a perfect individual, does that render the rest of us obsolete?_

_I don't know. I just don't know._

_[ENTRY END. PLAYING NEXT.]_

_[ENTRY UNRECOVERABLE. PLAYING NEXT.]_

_The prototype, "Biolizard", is not coming along well. A Bio-synthetic fusion has been implemented to keep the nervous system feedback from destroying further tissue. Removal of genome 3347 from the genetic sequence has also had the unforeseen effect of leaving the growth plates indefinitely open, causing the prototype to continue expanding to enormous proportions. The implants have had to be changed three times already, and we had to move it to a new containment facility to in order to accommodate the growth spurt. Still, the data we're collecting is extensiv'-e, an^d. tUe f)in(*l_

_[DATA CORRUPTED. Skipping to next available section...]_

_a%s str+etching my morals to their limits. The sickening truths about our universe, about what we as human beings are capable of, it's all coming to light with Project Shadow. I can taste the bile in the back of my throat, looking over all that we have wrought here. The organisms... The test subjects... The abominations we perform in the name of science, of the good of humanity..._

_I went down today to get the requested tissue samples I needed to compare with the Biolizard's blood work. Doctor Ridean hadn't got the memo I sent him, but he said it'd only take him a minute. I watched as he pulled a leopard gecko from a cage on the far wall, slapped it down on a sheet of surgical tissue and cut it open with a scalpel. Forceps, Clamps, they all came into play as he sliced out the components desired and washed everything else out with a hose. And after sealing up the samples with latex and plastic, he left the thing there, still twitching, until he'd finished cleaning his other tools and proceeded to toss the barely living lizard in a hazardous waste bucket._

_I took what I needed and left, but I felt nauseated by the surgical precision, the pain I saw in that animal's eyes as it was vivisected. What is wrong with us? We think nothing of the animal's lives we toss away by dozens, hundreds, thousands at the time no more than an ant accidentally stepped on. If that had been a human on the table, an ordinary person witnessing it would have purged their bowels right there. But things like fish, pigs, and chicken? We'll kill and clean them while holding a casual conversation._

_What kind of monsters are we? What kind of monster am I?_

_[ENTRY END]_

"That's it?" asked Rouge.

Eggman snorted as he typed a few more commands. "That's more than most could get. There's a great deal of data corruption in the archives, and this is all I can access from here. We need to get closer to the central control room in order to retrieve more entries."

Shadow, meanwhile, seemed lost in thought. Understandable, Tails thought himself, watching the black hedgehog while Eggman and Rouge continued to bicker over the definition of quality hacking. The kitsune knew little about Ivo's Grandfather except for what the younger Robotnik had told them. Apparently Gerald Robotnik had been one of the greatest scientific minds ever back on Earth, and a peer even to Eggman in the capacity to create and tinker. He was also a more or less father figure to Shadow, being his creator. Gerald's opinions and musings would carry great weight for the ultimate life form… And Tails couldn't help but feel a little afraid of the psychological backlash they all might find in the records of a man as he slipped slowly into insanity.

"Bah!" said Eggman, bringing the kitsune back to reality. "Stick to looking at your jewels, and keep your opinions where they have weight." He pointed a gloved finger on the monitor, trailing dust as he traced a path. "This isn't the fastest way to the inner colony, but it is the most likely to maintain system functionality. It's our best bet."

Shadow squinted, coming out of his thoughts. "That leads through a lot of the old labs. They might have emergency power, but there's no telling what might still be lingering there after all this time; malfunctioning equipment, loose contaminants, or even live experiments."

"Sounds perfect!" said the Doctor, patting the front the Egg Walker. "Wouldn't want the trip to get boring, now would we? And I need to run some live ammo tests on my latest creation anyway, so hopefully we'll run into something to shoot on the detour."

Tails turned his head and shared a look with Cosmo. The two nodded to one another, the kitsune returning his vision to Eggman. "Alright then," said the twin-tailed fox, "let's get going."


	5. Midflight Fight

The red lighting from the wall circuits faded as the two walkers stepped into another room, replaced by green that came from brightly lit tanks filled with fluid in the color of neon. Pipes ran along the top of the canisters, feeding into the walls on either side and still circulating fluids even after all the time that had passed.

Shadow stared at the opaque depths of one of the liquid-filled pods as the Egg Walker went past, followed by the Cyclone and Rouge. He exhaled, a bit of condensation forming on the cold glass before stepping away and trailing behind the rest of the group.

"Another one…" said Cosmo, Tails looking behind him and following her gaze. A larger tank on their left side was shattered, the fluid around it long dried and mostly evaporated. It had been the third broken tube they'd seen since entering the area.

"Probably happened decades ago," said Eggman from his mecha in front of theirs. "What was in these tanks anyway, Shadow?"

"Various things," said the ultimate life form. "Most of these pods were used to contain both successful and failed live experiments in indefinite stasis, as reference points for future projects."

The seedrian looked with newfound disgust at the tanks. "You mean there are still living things in these?! We should free them! Who knows how lon-"

"No." interrupted Shadow, shaking his head and looking back up over his shoulder at the Cyclone's passenger. "The ARK had a number of failsafe protocols to minimize damage incase experiments ever got loose from the labs. One of them was to shut down life-support functions to all storage tanks in the event that main power should be lost or turned off, rather than risk them escaping onto a defenseless facility. If you drained all these pods, the only thing you'd find are preserved corpses."

Tails tasted bile as he looked upon the rows upon rows of tanks than extended both around and below the walkway they were traveling. Had Gerald known about this too? He must have, if even one of his own creations did. How could someone accept such things as necessary, yet still strive to better his own species? Did such means really justify the ends?

The walkers and their escort continued onward, passing over several more rows of stasis tanks and then a few vats filled with the same shimmering, green liquid. After that, another double-layered door opened upon a narrow walkway, white light shining under the wide-set rails running on either side. A lift platform hovered in the middle of the shaft, and Tails leaning over the side of the Cyclone saw only darkness below. Above, the red circuit-lights reappeared between the iron sheets that lined the shaft, mingling with the white coming from under the rails and along the edges of the lift to create a faintly pink hue that tinted metal, fur, and flesh.

With everyone aboard, the platform should have started to ascend. But as the seconds rolled on without automated movement and fingers tapped impatiently against iron hulls, it became quickly apparent that something wasn't working right.

Rolling his eyes, Shadow got down on one knee at flipped open a maintenance panel on the lift floor. "The weight and motion sensors are broken," he said, tapping at something unseen within the rat's nest of wires and buttons, "as well as the manual override. The only way this thing is going to move is if someone activates the controls at the top."

"Well then," said Eggman, looking over at the Cyclone and its pilot, "how fortuitous then that we have a flying mechanic with us."

"Yeah," agreed the kitsune, standing up from his seat and warming up his namesakes, "lucky me."

"Rouge!" Ivo then yelled, turning to the bat who was somehow inspecting her nails despite them being covered by gloves. "Go with Tails, just incase."

The bat glanced back over her shoulder at Eggman, and then after shrugging took wing.

"Be careful, Tails." Said Cosmo as the kitsune took off as well, responding by looking back and winking at her before the two fliers disappeared in the distance above.

A couple of minutes passed as the two ascended up the shaft and farther into the Colony. Then Rouge, with a wicked smile, broke the silence as she looked in the kitsune's direction and said quite bluntly: "So I heard you knocked up your girlfriend."

The comment caught Tails so much off guard that his namesakes stopped spinning, and he fell flailing for a few seconds before remembering how to fly. His face was flushed with red when he finally caught back up with the bat, and she didn't even give him a chance to stutter out a response before continuing on: "Oh, that's a definite yes. Don't suppose it was behind those stomach issues too, huh? Well good job kid. At least some men can put together the deeper meaning behind the stares, the smiles, and the exclusive attention. Still, if I ever got to that point with a certain echidna, I'd make sure he knew what a condom was and how-"

Mercifully, Tails was spared whatever impure place this conversation was probably headed as an electrical pulse arced between him and Rouge, overloading the crimson circuit board behind the two and sending the metal plate covering it clanging horizontally across the shaft before tumbling down below. The guilty party of the attack, a squad of GUN Beetles and a GUN Hawk, descended from above as they continued to fire yellow streaks of energy at their targets.

The duo reacted with the initiative and instinct ingrained from countless battles, spreading apart to provide two pursuits instead of one. From above, Rouge flew directly amongst the throng of beetles, thinning their ranks with both friendly fire and her trademark Screw Kick. Below, Tails flew around as an erratic target, drawing fire and occasionally slicing through one of the armed drones with his whirling namesakes.

The tactic worked for a time, but numbers still threatened to overwhelm the two fliers. Acting with daring, the kitsune swerved up into the mass of floating robots, landing atop the GUN Hawk. The machine didn't take kindly to the uninvited passenger, swerving and twisting as it attempted to throw its hitchhiker off. The twin-tailed fox would not be denied though, somehow maintain a hold while tearing off a panel and going to work on the circuitry within. Wires were cut and resistors burnt out, the golden eye on the front of the droid winking out as its chassis was hijacked.

With speed and precision, Tails reconnected another set of wires and shoved his right arm down into the GUN Hawk's central motherboard. Spreading flat as electrical blasts continued to only just miss him, the kitsune took manual control of the chassis with the movement of his hand, rotating his new weapon around as it blasted the beetles one by one with their own firepower, each one detonating in a fantastic cloud of mechanical parts and smoke.

The numbers of the GUN droids had been reduced to almost nothing when the kitsune suddenly screamed, white-hot pain searing his right tail. The beetle responsible spun around, hovering directly into Tails' face as it charged a shot, but was blown apart before it could fire when Rouge drove into its side with her heel.

The kitsune's hand, still contorting from the pain, snapped the upper circuit board it was directing in two, the GUN Hawk's turbine belching out smoke as it began to succumb to gravity and fall. Tails tumbled off the top of the droid's left side, unable to do more than plummet as it hurt just to think about moving his namesakes, let alone spinning them. His drop down would have likely been long had Rouge not been there, the bat swooping and grabbing the young mechanic around the waist, groaning as she hauled her own weight as well as his up with nothing but her wings.

Somehow, the queen of self-pampering managed to lift them both the last stretch of the shaft, depositing her baggage on the docking ledge before landing a few feet off, complaining "And I thought the Master Emerald was heavy…"

Tails, still twitching from the sensitivity of the pain, struggled over the lift controls and managed to yank off the panel, punching the emergency call before dropping to his knees. As gently as he could, the kitsune pulled his injured tail around his back so he could inspect the wound. Scorched fur was clumped and frayed near the base of his right namesake, the middle completely devoid of it with wide stretches of white blisters where the energy weapon had struck.

Suppressing a whimper, the kitsune let the appendage coil back into place as he put his head against the wall and tried to control his breathing. He'd gotten lucky; a direct hit from a G.U.N. weapon was powerful enough to cripple a person from what he remembered back on Earth. The burns he had seemed mostly superficial, though that meant they'd also be significantly more painful. He wouldn't be doing anymore flying today; it was a good thing then that he'd brought the Tornado 3.

It's funny how, when you're in pain, time seems to stop behaving normally. Each aching pulse reminds you of the seconds and how slow they are passing by, yet the nothing you do from moment to moment can make even hours blur together as you forget all about the cycles of day and night. Tails remained in such a daze as the freshness of the wound faded and the sharp stab of blood passing through dulled to a throb. Rouge either didn't notice, didn't care, or just thought him man enough to deal with it as she quietly waited with an occasional personal pruning.

The heartfelt cry of his name woke Tails from his dozing, Cosmo jumping down from the Cyclone and running between the smoking, crashed wrecks of several GUN Beetles scattered around the platform as the lift finished locking into place with the walkway. The seedrian stopped quite rapidly as she saw the cooked skin of the kitsune's tail, putting a hand over her mouth and as she got closer and examined the wound. "Ahh!" she squeaked, switching her gaze to his own, "Tails, are you alright?!"

Obviously not, he thought, but bit back the bitter remark upon seeing the genuine concern in her eyes. Even pain couldn't make him barb his words, not to Cosmo. "I'll… Be fine," he said, quoting her from earlier but unable to suppress an eye twitch as her hand caressed one of the blisters.

The plant girl didn't seem ready to take that for an answer though, reaching down and tearing a piece of fabric from the bottom of her dress, not unlike something she had done nearly a year ago. "Here," she said, "hold still." Keeping the end of fabric to the base of the wounded tail, Cosmo wrapped it around in an outward clockwise spiral until the makeshift bandage covered the burned fur and flesh.

Standing up, Tails gingerly tested the appendage and was pleasantly surprised that it no longer hurt so long as he didn't move it too quickly. "Thanks flower," he said, hugging his love and touching a butterfly kiss to the side of her head with his nose.

Eggman made a gagging noise, earning him a glare from the two that caused him to put up his hands in a gesture of surrender. Behind him, Shadow snorted as he casually stepped over the sparking remains of a former beetle. "So," he began, "I suppose there's an explanation for why it started raining outdated machinery?"

"GUN Mecha," said Rouge, standing up and folding her arms. "The military probably sent up a few platoons to guard the ARK after our little bid for world dictatorship. It wouldn't be hard to think about them getting dragged back into our world with the rest of the ARK."

"It would be hard to picture why they would attack on sight though," returned Eggman. "Myself or Shadow I could understand, but certainly not Tails." The fat man folded his arms. "Or you single-handedly wiping out a platoon of GUN bots, for that matter." He said snarkily.

"Everyone underestimates me," said the bat, closing her eyes and holding her arms out. "Most people don't even realize how hard it is to be a treasure hunter, run a club, and be a government spy all at once."

"EX-government spy," corrected Shadow.

"Regardless," said Tails, trying to trim the barbs the conversation was growing and turn it back to something practical, "the fact remains that, yes, GUN Mecha is aboard the colony. And they have been programmed to attack on sight."

"Meaning?" asked Rouge, lazily opening an eye at the twin-tailed fox.

"Meaning," continued Shadow along the kitsune's line of thought, "someone reprogrammed them."

Silence.

"It's undeniable then," concluded Eggman. "We aren't the only ones aboard the ARK."


	6. Enter Chaos

The sparking, mangled chassis of laser and shield hunters littered the warpath left behind them as the entourage continued unopposed through the upper labs, drawing ever closer to the heart of the space colony. More doors and empty halls later, the walkers strolled loudly into one of the main research facilities, not far from the central control room. Circuits and wires ran across the walls of the area, feeding from skeletal power supplies and sparking angrily when it wasn't enough to sate their hunger.

Slowly stepping up to the circular reactor station in the center of the chamber, the Cyclone made a precision stop at the edge of a control panel only a finely-tuned machine was capable of. Tails winced as he got off from his wounded namesake, leaning over the side of his mecha and tapping on a panel until the light attached to it winked on. After a few seconds of the holographic interface failing to respond, the kitsune then pried the panel off and pulled a keyboard out from within, a thick layer of dust covering the buttons like dirty snowflakes.

Brushing off the lint shroud of years, Tails tapped a few buttons and was pleased to see the monitor flash to life and respond appropriately. "Let's see if we can access anymore entries from here," he said, typing in the strange password-proclamation of 'Destruction through Perfection'. Text whizzed down the screen as the system ran recovery scripts and compiling the data. After another short wait, the type decelerated down to a legible speed; a familiar, slow scroll crawling up from an unseen pen.

_Biolizard is a failure._

_None of my other colleagues may want to see it, but I do. Even as a prototype, we've accomplished little to nothing for all our efforts. I look upon this gargantuan lizard, blind and wracked with constant pain, its life only sustained from the massive tank upon its back, and we are expected to be gazing upon perfection? To be in awe? All I see is an abortion of nature, and all I feel for the creature is pity._

_Of the diminutive data we have gathered, the only thing I can even determine is that our species, as well as any and all others on our planet, appears to be biologically incapable of eternal youth. Our very DNA is so grossly askew from thousands of years of evolution that is has has turned it into dirty strings which literally unravel as we age. No Earth-born animal has or ever will have the genetic template we need to complete the project._

_I refuse to let this stop me, however. For Maria's sake, I cannot give up simply because something appears to be 'impossible'. I simply need to step back and look at this problem from another angle._

_[ENTRY END. PLAYING NEXT.]_

_I have found the answer I sought and far, far more. The solution to Project Shadow does not exist in our present, nor even in the future… but lies hidden in our past._

_Desperation drove me to this incredible discovery. After consulting countless medical journals, textbooks, and articles, I was beginning to lose hope. I turned to the works of the Great Civilizations, those who came before us in the ancient past and the empires of which spanned our globe, in the hopes their wisdom might be my salvation. And I found something as I compared them, or rather; it was what I couldn't find. We know of three, but I began to notice patterns that indicated there must have been at least five._

_Perplexed, I delved further. My initial hypothesis proved correct, as there actually did seem to be a total Five Great Civilizations. The problem was that almost all traces of the fourth and fifth, the most recent, appear to have been thoroughly scoured from our world. Little more than hints and indication of their existence remain, but they are most definitely there._

_Here I began to see another pattern as well: Every civilization seem to speak about a set of jewels whose names crudely translate to "Chaos Emeralds"_

"He knew about the Chaos Emeralds?!" blurted out Tails.

From his own mecha, Eggman wiggled his mustache. "He must have. How else could he have designed the Eclipse Cannon to overcharge on chaos energy, or designed Shadow to tap into the emeralds' power?"

The ultimate life form remained only silent as he continued to read the journal entry, Tails turning back and doing so as well.

_whose names crudely translate to "Chaos Emeralds" in our own tongue. The references go from acknowledging the existence of these gemstones to borderline worship. The Civilizations all seem to agree, however, that their power was enormous; a practically unlimited source of both positive and negative energy that could bend the very fabric of reality._

_At first, I thought these emeralds might be the answer, though little did I know at the time that they no longer resided upon Earth. I thought that the chance to manipulate space-time could have given the edge we needed to have a breakthrough with Project Shadow. But the truth spiraled ever deeper, and I had only torn off a single layer. And that truth is that we are not alone._

_Our world was once part of a much larger one,_

"He knew about the two worlds too?" said the Kitsune aloud once more, and was promptly shushed by his companions as the text continued scrolling despite his interruption.

_part of a much larger one, but has since been torn apart. It is similar in the vein of thought that our moon was once a piece of our planet's crust, blasted free from some unknown force and condensing into a body that orbits its parent. The difference, however, is vast. Our world and another, lurking somewhere in an entirely different dimension, reside on a very similar sort of 'co-spacial axis'._

_This is why there are there are so few traces of the fourth and fifth civilizations, and why we have never found the fabled Chaos Emeralds. During the height of the fourth and rise of the fifth, the world was sundered in two by some unbelievably powerful force, so incredibly strong that it sent one of the planets into an entirely new timestream. The emeralds and the civilizations were separated from us, and our sister world is likely where they still remain to this day._

_Something, and I am not certain what, tells me that my answer lies on this parallel world, severed from our own across dimensional boundaries. I shall follow my instinct on this, for surely there must be some way into this alternate reality._

_[ENTRY END. PLAYING NEXT.]_

_[ENTRY UNRECOVERABLE. PLAYING NEXT.]_

_[DATA CORRUPTED. Skipping to first available section...]_

_G&Sy( *s n'ot% wht I had hoped for, but it was still an enormous success. Based on these studies from the ruins and the best records of the Chaos Emeralds that I could find, I have constructed a synthetic version of one. It is obviously flawed, the output is nowhere near as high as described in the records, and more than 90% of it is negative energy. Also, from experimentations with prototypes, I know that any significant power draw from it would cause the entire gemstone to breakdown within seconds. This remains a huge breakthrough, however, and I have high_

"LOOK OUT!!" screamed Cosmo, causing Tails to jolt the controls on instinct and throwing the Cyclone to the side. It wasn't a moment too quickly either, a pair of green lasers blasting into the console the mecha had been just been standing at, the monitor exploding in an array of sparks and lights from blown bulbs.

The kitsune's first thought upon turning to face their assailant was surprise, for across the room hunched a watery, bipedal figure that he initially mistook for Chaos. Yet, it took only another moment Tails to recognize this was not the guardian of the chao. Its form was made from a thicker, more opaque ooze that quivered randomly, and far less symmetric than the smooth, transparent body of the real Chaos. Yet more obvious a clue was the head, which was made of coiled metal with narrowed green eyes just below a radioactive symbol stamped across its forehead.

Unfortunately, speed was not something that the two aquatic beings had in common. The ooze-monster suddenly and swiftly slid across the deck as if surfing, its three-fingered hands lancing out like spears. Tails pulled on the yoke again, the Cyclone responding by hopping up and over the attack. Landing to the side, he countered by firing three bursts from the front-mounted bazooka before getting behind the cover of the reactor.

"What _is_ that?" the kitsune asked aloud, watching as Eggman now entered the fray with his own mecha from behind their shelter. The Chaos-like creature arced out its arms like before, which glanced off of the Egg Walker's armor. Chortling with evil glee, Ivo unloaded several salvos from his cannon while their opponent continued to dodge, evading a screw kick from Rouge as it slid around a stack of crates and regained a line of sight with its original prey.

Ammo flashed from the muzzle of the Cyclone's Bazooka, Tails pushing the mecha to the left in a strafing run. The copycat of the God of Destruction jumped up and over the attacks, its metal head lifted on a pillar of blue ooze before reforming upside-down from the ceiling. Sliding out of the line of Shadow's chaos spears, the clone's eyes lit up, another pair of energy beams blasting outward in a destructive arc. The kitsune pushed his mecha back to the right, but the attack had only been a feint to keep him out of cover, twin lasers firing again at the spot the Cyclone was stepping into.

Cosmo shrieked the pilot's name again, too late to do anything. Tails' head whipped uselessly to the imminent hit… And was left stunned as an emerald shield of light flared up between the Cyclone and its attacker, the beams of paler color bouncing off the barrier and into nearby walls. The Chaos copy made an alien noise, something displeasing between a hiccup and the drone of buzzing wings, slithering along the ceiling before vanishing into a vent, robotic head and all.

Blinking, the kitsune watched the glittering shield fade and turned around to see an equally confused Cosmo, her palm outstretched and gently glowing with the same energy. Before he could ask anything of her, however, a loud clatter of metal scraping metal caught the attention of both as Shadow kicked an iron crate over and stared at the vent their foe had used to make good its escape.

"Artificial Chaos," the ultimate life form named their foe. "Our 'guest' must have let it out of containment as well."

"It bears a strong resemblance to the original," said Eggman.

"You met it?" asked Shadow, his brows furrowing as he turned to face the Doctor.

Ivo grinned. "I released it."

The black hedgehog snorted, "It shouldn't be a surprise. You make a habit of awakening forgotten weapons." Not giving time for Eggman to snark, his head returned to staring at the grate. "It was created from the tablets that described the real one, using data from the Professor's original success of synthesizing Chaos Emeralds."

"You already knew about that?" asked Tails, still a bit shocked from the events of the last five minutes.

Shadow opened his mouth to respond, but was drowned out by the clamber of the metal plates falling from overhead. Apparently the ultimate life form's attack had done more damage than intended. The Cyclone, Egg Walker, Rouge, and Shadow all had virtually no time to react before half the ceiling came crashing down, debris and dust spraying out in destructive waves that splashed all across the room.

Another dozen seconds passed before the Cyclone managed to push free of the wreckage, Tails making sure his love was alright before looking for others. Rouge, aside from a small cut below her left eye was fine as well, and Shadow stood unscathed atop a small heap of rubble a little further off, the Blue Chaos Emerald glittering in one of his hands.

Well, at least Chaos Control worked well for him, thought the kitsune bitterly to himself. He still wished that the black hedgehog could have spared a thought for the rest of them though. Speaking of the rest of them… "Where's Eggman?" Tails asked aloud.

Only silence answered him.


	7. Deceived

The dust had only begun to settle over the hillside of wreckage when it was knocked up again, chunks of wall plating spinning and pushed loose as the air was sullied once more with grimy particles. The source of the disturbance was a hand that had broken through the metal soil, followed shortly by a bald head and fat body. The Doctor coughed and took in a few gasps of the filthy oxygen, craning his neck as he heaved on the yoke of his mecha, the Egg Walker kicking free as well with every thrust of its legs.

Before long, the metal feet were restored to their dominant relationship with the floor, Eggman still shaking the cobwebs from his genius brain. Behind the protective lens of his glasses, Ivo's eyes scanned the room and surveyed the damage. It was obvious now – the ceiling had indeed caved in, mostly in the straight line where Shadow's chaos spears had struck. He'd been on the far side of the fault line with the black hedgehog, while the Cyclone and Rouge had been along the other. The ultimate life form had a faster reaction time though, and might have very well warped away from the area of collapse.

That left two options: Either they were buried alive, on the other side of the collapsed room, or some combination of the two. He guessed toward the latter, but the great Eggman had better things to do than dig through wreckage to confirm it. Besides, if they were still both alive and buried, they'd dig themselves out on their own… Probably.

The Doctor stared at the wall of debris for a few more seconds before muttering something indecipherable under his breath, tapping a green button on his main monitor between and behind the control yoke. Static buzzed across the screen for half a second, resolving into a map he'd downloaded from the first console they'd found aboard the ARK. He traced his finger along the tiny passageways again, quickly mapping another route that would take him to the central control room.

Satisfied with the corrected course, Eggman grabbed the controls and coaxed his mecha down the hill of rubble. The Egg Walker hopped and jogged in concert, and was soon heading on the move again down another series of corridors, its pilot not even sparing a backwards glance.

Unfortunately for the self-proclaimed genius, his ego was soon once again demanding something to talk to. It was his curse, sadly; Ivo was such a brilliant and talented conversationalist that letting the benefit of his company go to waste was just a crime. That, and the fact the Empire of Eggman kept being formed because of the intervention of animals… Regardless, he rectified it by doing what he always did at times like this: share his loquacity with himself.

"So," he said aloud and to nobody in particular, the Egg Walker continuing to trudge along through the otherwise silent halls, "What do we know so far?"

"Grandfather is involved through proxy," he answered himself, "or at least of interest to whomever else is aboard. And they are also quite clearly not wanting company, if Artificial Chaos and the GUN bots are any indication."

"But that's still vague," responded Ivo. "Let's see if we can narrow down the suspect list. We know that it is not Sonic or his pesky friends. And Tails is the probably the only one in that lot with the technological skill necessary anyway… Who else am I enemies with?"

"…Nobody in this world." said Eggman.

"Damn," he answered. "Well it could have been the presidential office or G.U.N. back on Earth, but they don't have the moxie for it either."

"So that means…" Ivo started.

"…It's probably not anyone that I know." Eggman finished.

An explosion from somewhere up ahead snapped the Doctor out of this obviously not monologue, causing him to jolt the controls before rushing up to find the source. After passing through two storage rooms, the Egg Walker quickly slowed down. Smoke tinted crimson by the lighting was billowing out from the next set of doors, with Tails, a dirty wreck of a kitsune, coughing and leaning on an iron crate to the side of it.

Ivo called out his fellow, but of course lesser, genius's name, the kitsune's head snapping up in response. "Eggman!" he cried, limping over to the Doctor. "Hurry! You've got to help them!"

"What?" said the Robotnik, raising a hairless brow. "Why- What's going on? Where's Shadow, or Rouge, or the Cyclone or even your girlfriend? And what's with all the smoke?"

"Artificial Chaos…" said the kitsune, finally making it over to the Egg Walker, "Ambushed us. Shadow's already gotten knocked out and the Cyclone is trashed. Rouge is fighting it all alone in there! You've got to help! You… You've got to save them!"

Eggman snorted. "Fine," he said, "fine, fine, I'll go. Just don't start thinking of it as a favor. I'm the bad guy, remember?"

The Doctor let out his Santa Claus evil laugh, rushing the Egg Walker into the fog. Behind him, the kitsune slowly lowered the hand he had been leaning on, standing straight up without even a flinch and watching with frosted calculation as the mecha disappeared into the smoke. Eggman may have been too caught up in the moment to notice, but the lack of both wound and bandage on the right tail of the yellow fox told all too well that something was very much off about this scenario…

Heedless to peril, Ivo continued to rush through and past the veil of thick, black air for quite a while before he started to slow down, puzzled. Where was the action promised by Tails? After another two rooms, he stopped completely. Hell, where was anything? But this second guessing had come already too late; the double-layered door behind him sealing with a hiss and displaying as locked with a red dash mark splashed across the octagonal monitor.

Reaching up to scratch his head in confusion, the Doctor stopped dead as the ground beneath the Egg Walker trembled. He just as quickly snapped back into action, sending the mecha dashing forward, coming about moments before the iron floor was wrenched apart. An enormous worm-like creature tore up through the metal earth, flesh of dark rock and violet lava. It had no head, but the top of the monster instead split into three twitching mandibles.

It shrieked; a long, thunderous roar that pounded around the room and grated even on Eggman's ears. Then the beast reared back and vomited a spiked, purple rock from its maw that bounced right at the Doctor. The mecha jumped and engaged its jet engine in attempt to fly over the rolling boulder, but directly beneath the Egg Walker it detonated in an explosion of compressed gas.

Ivo barely got the his creation landed, hopping down on one metal foot before getting back into stride. A laser pointed out from somewhere on the rust-coloured armor, painting the worm before a green ball of light burst out from the energy cannon over Eggman's shoulder. The projectile immediately homed it, blowing off one of the monster's mandibles in a small shower of hot, violet fluid. The beast shrieked again, the self-proclaimed genius responding with gunfire from his cannon, peppering the creature with rapid fire until it blew apart in a mess of magma and rock.

Giggling madly, the Doctor rubbed his hands together as he turned around and came nearly face-to-face with a pair of enormous dogs with elongated teeth and heads, both made out of the same material as the serpentine monster he'd just reduced to a pulp. Ivo paused for half a second, surprised, before reacting a hair too slow. The left one opened its jaws, and fired a _laser_ of all things, the orange beam burning into the Egg Walker's armor at point-blank range.

Then the mecha jumped forward… And landed right on top of the Stalker, turning it into a resemblance of its snake-like cousin. The one on the right got a taste of a boxing glove, Ivo turning his creation and causing the weighted fist to spring out of a covered compartment on the front of the mecha upon an extending arm and sock the beast in the jaw. It flew back a good ten feet, twitching for a few seconds until another green energy projectile impacted right into the creature's face.

"And the crowd goes wild!" shouted Eggman, waving his arms in the air and promptly withdrawing them when a crystal bird swooped just over him, its spiked tail missing his scalp by half a foot. The balding genius looked up, his eyes dilating upon witnessing the ceiling covered with the Takers.

All at once, they lit up, burning violet as flames sprang up on crystalline wings. The tiny phoenixes then descended like a carpet, a tide of purple glass descending upon the Doctor. Ivo 's laser splashed out across the horde, his blaster glowing like a sun as emerald fire streamed forth and detonating in blasts of indigo light from the twin energy sources.

He did some damage, but had yet to stem the crystal minions. As the Egg Walker actually began to withdraw against its opponents, the Takers began releasing blasts like black holes, sucking in the projectiles Eggman was throwing at them while he only just managed to continue to dodge the attacks.

Taking a strong left and going into a U-turn, the Doctor fired a flanking barrage from both his weapons, the combined assault shredding a massive number of the strange stringer-birds, the rest scattering as he continued to pick them off as they fled for vents and cover.

"Anyone else?!" yelled Eggman, somehow panting and sweating despite the fact he'd been sitting in a cockpit the whole fight. His challenge, unfortunately, was answered: the floor in the center of the wide room was rent open, shrapnel flying out in enormous amounts that made the worm he'd fought look like a mouse. From the center, an enormous form rose, all violet lava and obsidian rock; a humanoid seemingly wrought from hell itself.

Ivo's jaw dropped a good three inches before he slammed the oversized maw shut, grabbing the yoke of the Egg Walker again. One of these days, he really was going to need cut back on the ego; tempting fate was going to be the death of him. Pushing the mecha into a sprint, his right-mounted cannon started spewing out fire that did…

Nothing?

Before he could rectify his attack, the Titan reared back in a silent proclamation of fury, then slammed its massive fists down with incredible force. The shockwave caused the Egg Walker to trip and fall over, Eggman spinning out of his pilot chair in a daze. Staring up a hulking lava monster rearing back again can get you moving really quite quickly, however, adrenaline causing the Doctor to rush back to his mecha and get it upright in record time considering his weight.

As Ivo turned back to face his foe, it reared up again, this time its gigantic, purple veined hand calling a huge boulder of magma from seemingly nowhere. Before he could get out of the way, it swung the rock like a bowling ball, Eggman only blowing it apart a yard before impact. The explosion of heated air blew the mecha back again, the Doctor at least managing to stay in his chair this time.

Above, more problems came in the shrieks of the returning crystalline birds, the Robotnik's left eye twitching from frustration and anger now. His hand came down like a mallet on a control lever to the right, the scorched front half of his rust-red armor detaching and clanging off. It seems he hadn't forgone some of his former arsenal after all – his fingers clicking in a targeting code as his laser once again painted the annoyance that was the Takers.

With the pull of a trigger, the air around the Egg Walker exploded with a venerable arsenal of projectiles. Green Lights streamed away from the Energy cannon, an array of missiles streaking from the formerly covered racks. Detonations followed them; explosions of green, yellow, and blue fire, shards of violet and black raining all over the room.

Yet still, as the smoke cleared, the Titan stood. What was this thing?! It was harder to kill than Sonic! The Doctor shook his fists in composureless rage, slapping the front of the Egg Walker like an upset child. As the monster lifted it bloated hand to summon another soccer ball from hell, however, a glint of bright violet light caught Ivo's eye. There, in the retracted area where a head and neck should have been, a small portion of obsidian had pulled back like a lid to reveal the monster's core as it prepared its attack.

Seizing the opportunity, a single missile streaked out and crashed into the weak point, the creature's hand falling limp as it swayed, stunned. Chortling in his trademark laugh, more hysteric than ever, Eggman rushed his mecha forward, unloading all three weapon sets on the exposed portion. Stopping just in front of the wounded monster, he pummeled its legs with rounds from his volkan cannon until the rocky flesh finally chipped away.

"TIIIIM-" started Ivo, silenced promptly when the entire Titan swayed a last time and collapsed atop him. Dust sprayed out from the fall of the giant, and for a few seconds, silence returned to the room that had been so long quiet before. Then came the muffled sounds of exertion, followed by a hand reaching out from under the lava-beast's corpse, and then another, and then a head. Pulling out his upper torso before taking a moment to catch his breath, the Doctor suddenly stopped and then slowly bared his square teeth.

"I'm going to KILL that fox," he swore.


	8. Showdown

"So what was that?"

Cosmo pulled her eyes from the glass canopies on all sides of the lift, setting them instead on the Kitsune in the front seat. Tails had one hand on the control yoke, his other on the back corner of the chair with his head turned to hers. "Pardon?" she asked, sparing a quick glance down again and noting that Rouge and Shadow were likely not listening, engaged in a conversation of their own on the other side of the rising floor.

"That," he said again, gingerly standing up and turning around, making sure not to push his bandaged tail up against anything as he kneeled backwards in the seat. His right hand slowly extended and lightly took hers, turning it upright as his left descended and traced the palm line below her thumb. "You protected me," he continued, "creating some sort of barrier. What was it? How'd you do that?"

She pulled her hand back, cupping it with the other against her mouth. The kitsune didn't resist the movement. "I…" she began, "I don't know. I really don't, Tails. I just saw those beams coming and…" The seedrian returned her hands to her lap, her head falling down in shame. "I mean… My sisters used to tell me stories. Most of our heritage was lost with the homeworld, but some knowledge endured through the form of memories. I heard about some of our heroes had been born with more advanced abilities for photosynthetic manipulation, that they could actually shape absorbed light into new forms. But I always thought they were just that: stories!"

"They could do it," said Tails, folding his arms as his namesakes waved slowly in the air. "Pale Bay Leaf was able to make sabers out of light – I saw him do it in our final battle with the Metarex. At the time I thought he had just summoned them back, but he might have just as well created new ones."

"I'm… like the Metarex?" said Cosmo looking at her hands before squeezing both them and her eyes shut. "I-I am. No matter how much I try to do away with my past, no matter how hard I work to be like you, I'll always be of the same blood as them; the same species. You and all your friends are animals, and I'm a plant. A monster! A freak-"

She stopped her growing hysterics suddenly when a hand touched her chin, bringing her head back up as a pair of warm lips found hers. She blinked in surprise, Tails withdrawing from her face after a moment and tilting his head, his hand remaining where it was. "Hey," he said with a deep caring that warmed her soul, "I don't care what kingdom you were born from, okay? I love you; plant, powers, and all."

Cosmo stared for a few seconds at the kitsune, then closed her eyes again and leaned her head against the glove with a smile and contented sigh. "Thanks, Tails."

The lift shuddered and stopped, clamps on either side locking it into place. Shadow stepped off first, walking down the boarding ramp and stopping before the large door at the end. Punching in three digits onto the keypad beside it, the barrier hissed as it was lifted up by internal mechanisms, leaving a wide passage for the room beyond.

The hedgehog and bat entered first, followed shortly by the clanking of the Cyclone. The room beyond was wider than it had first appeared, a massive observation chamber with windows in both the floor and walls, Mobius shining like an enormous sapphire in the black sea below.

As they reached the center of the chamber, a gold-rimmed circle in the center of a metal X and surrounded by four glass triangle, the Cyclone stopped as Tails suddenly was caught in thought. "I…" he said, "I remember this place. It's where Sonic was ejected into space and Eggman and I battled."

"Which makes it all the more appropriate place to BURY YOU!!" shouted a familiar voice, the Egg Walker dropping down from one of the square holes in the ceiling. The kitsune blinked, surprised, and was completely caught off guard when Ivo started unloading rapid-fire rounds at point blank into the Cyclone's side.

"What the hell Eggman?!" shouted Tails as Cosmo ducked into her canopy, directing the Cyclone to jump up, the right side of his mecha riddled with impact dents. The Robotnik didn't respond, his taglaser painting the rear of his opponent's mecha and firing a homing attack from his blaster. The seedrian squeaked and put out her hands in reflex, a glowing emerald field bursting into being behind them and absorbing the attack.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" asked Shadow casually from the sidelines while Eggman fumed in frustration, a vein popping up on the side of his bald head.

"I'd like to know myself!" the kitsune shouted too, his hands readying over the controls of his vessel should Ivo attack again.

"You know perfectly well what!" shouted Eggman back to Tails, not failing to disappoint as the front of his mecha flashes, missiles streaking from the ports. The kitsune was ready this time though, jumping over the incoming projectiles and engaging the boosters, hovering as he made a counterattack of his own. Painting the Egg Walker with a taglaser of his own, the blaster on the Cyclone belched, a ball of sapphire light curving out along the right before smashing into the opposing mecha's armored leg. The Egg Walker pivoted, but remained upright.

"We tied the last time we fought here Eggman," said Tails, touching down and starting to circle Ivo. "And I've only gotten better since then."

"You dare compare yourself to the great Eggman?!" shouted the Doctor, absolutely livid, his rationality long since having packed up its bags and gone on vacation. "You're no match for me, you weak little fox!"

Both mechas jumped back at the same time, lasers pointing to one another as blue and green projectiles met midway between them. Rapid fire blazed from bazooka and cannon, jumps in turn avoiding the damage in this dance of destruction. Rouge had flown up to the ceiling just to stay out of the way of stray fire, and Shadow had vanished too, likely off to some sort of higher ground as well.

Another blue projectile smashed into the Egg Walker, this time on the left leg, leaving a large black mark on the rust-red armor plating. The Doctor's eyebrows slanted in rage, baring his teeth as he reached into his coat. The edges of his snarl pointed as his hand closed on something, the hate turning into devilish glee with his smile.

"Alright…" said Eggman, pulling his right hand up and revealing the Gray Chaos Emerald glowing with the dazzling radiance common to all seven jewels, "NO MORE GAMES TAILS!"

He then slammed the magnificent gemstone into a waiting slot upon the Egg Walker's console, the screen suddenly shining with the enormous surge of newfound power. The green lens on the front of the mecha lit up like a sun, becoming almost blindingly bright. There was the sound of a vacuum, the sucking of air before Eggman's transport, snakes of intense blue light spinning out in an eight-sided star from the tiny star. Then they collided back together, and with a thunderous crack that deafened everything in the chamber, exploded outward in a massive, gradient beam of indigo, cyan, and purple.

The kickback knocked the Egg Walker rearward at least five feet, the fat man flying and toppling heads over heels from his cockpit. The beam itself grew in milliseconds to twice its diameter, and if the kitsune hadn't been forewarned probably would have disintegrated him, Cosmo, and the Cyclone on the spot. As it was, he had thrown the mecha to the left as Eggman charged his super-weapon, and only lost a leg wing from the attack.

Unfortunately, neither party (especially Ivo) had actually given pause to consider collateral damage. The energy attack streaked past its intended target and didn't even slow down upon hitting the canopy wall, tearing through the metal and glass like tissue paper as it continued to scream out into space. The gaping hole, however, left pressurization problems, as a maelstrom of air was sucked into space.

Sound of metal scraping metal greeted Tails' ears as the Cyclone's feet were scraped along the floor towards the gaping black mouth, The kitsune bending the mecha lower and trying to provide more friction. He didn't dare jump – The limited amount of air would make propulsion almost useless, and the resistance made possible by the floor was the only thing actually keeping them from being outright dragged into space.

Rouge was even worse off. The bat had been floating about bored in the air, waiting for the boys to get the bloodthirst out of their systems, the vacuum catching her off-guard as she lost control in the sudden gust and tumbled towards the opening. Once again, Shadow saved the jewel thief, warping in by a window and casually reaching up and grabbing the bat by the boot. His spare hand held the frame in an iron grip, barely wavering in the suction.

This couldn't go on forever, though. The Cyclone was dragged with increased intensity toward the fissure despite Tails' best efforts, Cosmo looking back with wide eyes towards the wound in the ARK. Summoning up the courage a desperate moment can induce, the seedrian took several deep breaths of carbon dioxide to calm herself before raising up her hands. Truth be told she really had no idea what she was doing, but a trial by fire was more often the way to harness abilities than not. It was time to do or die… Literally.

Focusing on the gap, she willed something to happen as they inched closer toward it. Nothing happened. She twisted around fully in her seat, leaning forward on her knees as well as around the Cyclone's energy cannon. Still nothing. Panic returning, and with feet left to go, a trickle of moisture went down the back of her head. She could see Mobius below them now, and the light of the sun creeping around the left side of the hole-

Her hands started glowing.

With all her emotion, Cosmo pictured the sun in her head, the rainbow light of the Chaos Emeralds, the blaze of a wildfire. And from deep within her, a well of power responded. A blanket of green incandescence emerged from empty air, settling across the fissure. Light, however, did nothing to stop the vacuum, and with two or three feet between the Cyclone and being spaced, the plant girl clenched her hands into fists out of frustration and fright.

Instantly after, the emerald light hardened into a thick wall of green glass, bumpy and rough like clay molded by a child. Aesthetics were hardly a concern or point though, the pressure and air just as quickly leveling off as the solid barrier formed. The Cyclone ceased to screech across the floor, and there was a nearby thud as Rouge dropped to the ground, Shadow releasing his grips without a care as the normal atmosphere returned.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" came from Tails and Rouge almost simultaneously, thought the targets of their outbursts being aimed at Eggman and Shadow, respectively. The ultimate life form didn't even acknowledge his verbal assailant, while the Doctor shoved his mecha upright with a grunt and jumped back in it.

Tails, at once readying for another round, was surprised as Shadow warped directly in front of the Egg Walker and its line of fire. "Again, Doctor," said the black hedgehog, "I ask you: what are you doing?"

"Move it Shadow," said Eggman, grinding his teeth as he tried to sidestep his organic obstacle. "I don't have to explain myself to you, or anyone for that matter."

The ultimate life form, however, disagreed. Jumping atop the Egg Walker's windscreen, he stuck out a downward palm, the Gray Chaos Emerald yanked from the console by an unseen force and drawn into his hand. "And I don't have to share," he said, releasing the jewel to gently float about, its Blue sibling joining it as the two circled the black hedgehog like gemstone moons.

Eggman's right brow twitched a few times, Shadow watching with his face an emotionless mask. Finally; "I bumped into the fox alone after we separated. He lured me into a trap. I'm just balancing the account."

Tails' eyebrows moved now, narrowing into a V. "I wasn't even sure you were alive, Eggman. And I've been with Cosmo, Shadow, and Rouge this whole time. Ask any of them."

"So what," said the Doctor dramatically, raising his arms. "I'm supposed to believe you have an evil twin?"

"You mistook me for Sonic," said Shadow simply, once again surprising the kitsune by taking his side. It was just as quickly followed by a darker thought clouding in Tails' gut as he shared a worried glance with Cosmo.

Eggman just groaned and facepalmed.


	9. The Two Grandfathers

"Would you two stop acting like children?"

Neither Tails nor Eggman even glanced at Rouge, nor even acknowledged her question, far too intent on continuing to glare at one another as their scuffed mechas continued to walk side by side down the hallway. Hands twitched occasionally on their respective controls, both geniuses just waiting in paranoia for the other to make a move.

For the kitsune, he still wasn't entirely sure if he believed the Doctor's tale, but he felt perfectly justified in being cautious. Eggman himself had even admitted once that he wasn't entirely rational when angry, and Tails had nearly paid dearly for letting his guard down against his more often enemy than ally. It was ironic really, he'd come aboard being most paranoid about Shadow, yet the black hedgehog had actually been the most helpful next to Cosmo.

The party, and the stare-off, came to an unexpected halt as they rounded another corner, a wall of debris blocking the path. They were close now, very close to the central control room for the entire station. But fate, for some reason, seemed more intent than ever to keep them from their destination; this was the third time they'd run into a collapsed passage in the last twenty minutes.

"Ugh," said Eggman, "Again?" he grumbled as he brought up a map of their current area on one of his monitors. After a few seconds a stabbing buttons with his right hand, he pointed with his left toward a doorway back down the hall. "Alright, next best detour it that way."

Clanking down another walkway, the Egg Walker led the others into a smaller facility with varying glass vaults on either side, not unlike those they'd seen in the labs earlier on. Unlike the previous ones, however, these were empty save for dust, and appeared to have been out of use for a longer period.

As the Cyclone trudged along, Tails was struck with nostalgia again as he squinted at the containers. "These… look like compression chambers. Like the ones we found back in the Metarax base." he said, referring to himself and Cosmo. "But those were used to mass produce Fake Emeralds. How many did he actually make?"

"Do you iever/i stop asking rhetorical questions?" queried Eggman, earning him a return to their leering contest. It was broken up again just as quickly when Shadow beckoned them over to a console near the end of the chamber, a pod adjacent to it actually being occupied.

Tossing aside their grudges, the two mechas jogged over relatively quick, the black hedgehog holding the Blue Chaos Emerald up as his eyes darted between it to the container. Inside the latter appeared to be an exact twin at first glance, a Chaos Emerald impossibly of the same color, but continued observation revealed this not to be so. There was something… Off, about the jewel behind the glass, an almost sickening aura emanating from it. The cut seemed cruder, sharper, the normally bright lines refracting the light produced from within the gemstone dark and shadowy. Even the illumination generated from within it seemed tainted, suffused with a shade of pus-coloured blond.

"He actually did it," said Tails, gazing at the Artificial Emerald. It seemed that the late Gerald Robotnik could now claim membership to the club so far only he and the Metarex had been members of; those who'd actually produced (with varying degrees of success) an actual copy of a Chaos Emerald.

The sound of banging in the vents suddenly put everyone on edge, eyes drawn to the ceiling and those with weapons training them. Several seconds passed with nothing happening, and just as they were about to relax again a ceiling plate blew off, an azure streak flashing past and crashing into the glass container they'd been examining. As glass shards flew everywhere, Tails shielding his eyes with a hand, he got the briefest of glimpses at the thing. He saw a familiar blue ooze, green eyes on an iron head, and metal bones with dark gems embedded upon them.

Just as quickly, the stream of semi-solid material flew out, trailed by gunfire from both mechas. It never even gave pause to attacks, shooting back up to its point of entry and vanishing within the hole in the ceiling. As faint wisps of smoke curled from weapons, silence again returned.

"That was Artificial Chaos," said Shadow simply, after a few moments of hush.

"Seizing a Fake Emerald." continued Tails.

Eggman snorted but said nothing. The girls did likewise, skipping the grunting part.

Finally getting it through his head that the clone of the God of Destruction was not returning, Tails turned the Cyclone back to the smashed tube, reaching over the side and activating the console beside it. The CPU took about half of a minute to reboot, a surprise given its age, but quite a welcome one. Typing out a system query, the console hummed as it returned an index of documents.

A new set of available files in a familiar directory caught the kitsune's eye, and he beckoned the others over. Artificial Chaos was quickly forgotten as they found themselves looking at the last cache of logs from the journal of Gerald Robotnik. With one more push of a button, they began to play.

_[WARNING. SEV&RE DATA CORRU^ION. Pl%eaSe contac4 adminisss0)tration services for assist7a$nce]_

_[DATA CORRU%PTED. Skipping to first avail^&ble section.^..]_

_&$)0tJso_ Iwj Ussing- Prject.., Shdw; kall- Yeh* Blk *rms #cnnts ///_

_[DA$TA CORRUPTED. Sk6pping to next available sec(*tion...]_

_rrt-^ disas-ter alwayu*r ining poblems. Prject Gateway has prov//ven successful though, e&en with the cost I had to pay to ke*p things moving. I can't afford to fail now, too much is at take, and time is running desperately sh%ort. The Doctors say Maria has little over 2a year( left wit= her current condition. If I must give up the Gizoid to finish Project Shadow, then so/so/so1? be it. I've already done all I can for it anyway._

_Back on topic- Yes, usin7 Artificial Emeralds to power Project Gateway is not enough to fulfill its original scope and purpose, but it was enough to get into our neigh55oring world. I have seen with my own eyes our sister world, and what magnificence lies upon it. And the fifth great civilization still thrives upon it! But I am getting ahR^ead of myself once /again._

_After creating a stable portal, I ventured in, alone, into what could have ery well been oblivion. I arrived inst#ead upon a green meadow, lush grasslands all around&d me. Exploring, It was not long before I came across natives. Strangely, I was far more surprised at their appearance than they were mine. I supposeing?ing? I can understand it in hindsight, theirs is such a species of versatility._

_Mobians, they called ttemselves, after the sister world they live upon: Mobius. The closest thing I can relate them to is a species of anthropomorphic animals, almost all bre3ds of which you could find upon Earth. Hovv genetics played into the creation of this great civilization is something I cannot even begib to guess at._

_Upon asking for aid, I was given directions# to one of their cities, also more like our own thn alien in !design. Unlike us, thouh, they are much mo5re highly fond of nature, with trees and grass mingling with structures of stone and metal. I felt almost as if I were in Venice, for the nu}{mbr of waterways and rivers outnumbered the roads and paths thrice over. Apparently, though, the true habitat of mobians was the countryside. |Aside fom commerce and trade, I discovered most of "them lived in the forests, plains, and montains, as I hung-ily spent hours in a library learning all that I could o$f this world._

_And then came my greatest disco^very of all: Perfection._

_I had just finished ano*ther book when there was an explosion outside, a shelf fallig over and nearly at#op me. Rushing fro the building, I fouwnd chaos outside, the animaloids (is that even a word? Eh, I suppose it will be8 once I show the rest of the sc!i!entific community my findings) in a pani^c. From the forest ahead, the carapace of a colossal centipede shone wth turquoise chitin~ overlaid with gold streaks. I found myslf reminded of the Biolizard for a moment, yet was drawn quickly back to re0ality upon realizing I w`as upon the intended path of its destructive ram\page._

_I turned to flee wit the rest of the mobians, but stopped just as sudde%nly when a gold streak +flew overhe:ad. Enraptured, it struck the creatures right in the mandibles, not even slwing as it broke1 off and started zigzagging around it like a caffeinated fly. I lost traFk of time watching this strange event, but I would wager after maybe a m3inute or less the enormous insect grw frustrated and was driven back into the forest b6y the shimmering blur._

_The mobians clapped hands and paws $happily, the golden figure (for now I could definitely makde out a form within the light) desceding down like some sort of archangel. Curious as to my savior agnd the protector of the city, I sprinted as fast as my old body would allw toward the area the being was landing at. Arriving at a pond that ran around a buil%ding, my old eyes found there a mobian hedgehog covered in a golden aura, his fdur and quills all alight with swirling energy._

_There was a gu^st, a short wind that came gently from nowhere, and I beheld yet more wonrders as seven magnificent jewels spun out around him; Green, Blue, Cyan, Red, Purple, Yellow, Gray. Each pulsed in harmkony with brilliant, perfect light, nd I knew, without even a margin of doubt in my mind, that I was in the presence of the fabled Chaos Emeralds. There was another crac(kle of energy, and the golden light of the hdgehog flowed into the jewels. The gemstones flared as the took in the power, and with a final flash shot out in all directions upon the horizon._

_After watching with awe as the rainboiw streaks passed oer the horizons, I looked backd to their point of origin. Standing now where the glowing hedgehog was the same being, but… orinary. A simple mobian hedgehog with ice-blue fur and quills, a white patch shsaped like an inverted triangle on his chest. He sighed,1mumbling something about being too old for saving the city before regarding me with the kind smie I'd expect from a fello*w old man, but not one hso young. I returned it, or at least I think I did, I was still in so much shock I wouldn't be surprised if my facial muscles no lonkger worked._

_I introduced myself, and he as well; Sky the Hedgehog, he called himself. He was curious to my lack of a species surname, and I decided honesty was the best course, telling him ofs my journey to their world. He took it surprisingly well, but I suppose mobians must have led more chaotic and d9angerous lifestyles than humans if my brief encounter with them was any indication. My curisity got the better of me, and I found myself launching a perhaps unreasoable sum of quest?ions that Sky barely had enough time to answer between breaths. Apparently I had just witnessed what the hedgehog called his super form, an empowered! state of being fueled s3by the positive energy of the seven Chaos Emeraldse, which granted an enormous boost to physical abilities and unlocked hidrden abilities within the user. Apparenftly, the ability to take on a Super form was restricted, however, as only he, his mother, and grandfather on her side had been able to asZsume it. _

_As the conversation grew lighter, I spoke of my own family as well, and especially of Maria. He surprised me, it seemed Sky was old3er than I thought, as it turned out he had a son and mate ofs his own. His child was aleady beginning to learn how to tap the power of the Emeralds, passively mentioning he hoped to pass down the mantle #of hero to his offspvring soon and retire from advnturing. He inquired of my world as well, and we s^hared stories by the pond as the sun sped by overh-ead. Eventually though, I had to bid farewll, not wishing to leave the gateway open between our worlds open for tooy long (the ARK has somse impressive defensive systems, but leaving it linked to a planet with gigantic vermin is a risk that could end with a lot of unnecessary dam(age and ijury)._

_Looking back on my experence on Mobius, though, I am disheartened. I never told Sky, bt his cap^acity to ta4p into the Chos Emeralds is exactly thesort of perfe(6ction I have pent months, nay, years searching for. That kind of power an-d ability to manipulate matter is a godsnd, an exaple of what a true ultimate life form should be capble of. With the pro5per genetic *harness to cap and cotrol chaos- energy, you could stave off cancer, a&ging, and all the biological tim=ers that mortals like ev+en he mst endure. If only I had( a body like his, a fetus, SO*METHIN-=G to wrk w^ith… G&gh.!Pe^aps… Peraps,at lst I$ sh6l aeve! T()oc}oeact Bl[eck()Dgo\m&//s/.(%9j(_

The screen scrolled on into further gibberish before at last a critical error splashed across the screen and the player was sent back to the main directory. For a long time, no one said anything, just staring silently as each dealt with this new information and categorized it in their own way.

At last, Shadow broke the silence, his eyes flicking open from internal debate and unanswered questions, simply saying "let's keep moving" before he continued to walk down the aisle of pressure chambers.

"Uh, yeah," said Tails, figuring if the creation of the journal's author had nothing to discuss, he really didn't have much right to bring it up. "We should be close anyway. How much farther is the central control room if we keep following this detour Eggman?"

The Doctor raised a single finger as they went around a corner, pointing to a familiar set of iron gates. "Just through there."

High-strung and unhealthily paranoid, the party approached the doors and waited silently as they slid open with little complaint. Glances were shared no more than once or twice, between lovers, rivals, companions, and even enemies. And then, in silence, they entered the dim chamber beyond, and the darkness that contained a baleful revelation.


	10. Origins

Darkness. He was acquainted with it well by now, the air and gas devoid of light. A nonexistent veil given form only from the delusion of a blinded sentient. But as well as he knew it, he also knew not to underestimate it. For the darkness may cloak you well, but may also hide your enemies.

The night here was not absolute. Holographic data streams flickered far below like fireflies in perfect formation, shades of varying light trickling back up to their procession above and flashing geometric patterns across the segmented green-globe that surrounded the large room. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in the recycled air, his ears twitching as he heard the mecha clank across the floor, feeling the raw pulse of energy from the Chaos Emeralds he carried with him. Unwanted questions formed only a few minutes ago popped again into his mind, and he banished them with absolute focus, emptying his brain of distractions.

The clash of metal on metal stopped, and his feet followed suit in reflex. Opening his eyes, he stood at the center of an all too familiar place. Clover-shaped lights made of raised gold were embedded at intervals along a disc-shaped platform, mingling with a bluish hue cast from the four large ringed orbs that floated in the air above. In the middle rose a pillar of segmented crystal, surrounded by sheets of glass that stretched to the inner ring of the platform. Standing before this and directly in front of them was a single seat and console, the latter covered by a myriad of strangely-shaped buttons which were outlined in azure light given off from the single large screen that towered above it.

The Cyclone moved forward on his right, and the ultimate life form watched in silence with his arms folded, a common stance of his, as the Kitsune in the pilot's seat disembarked from his mecha. The twin-tailed fox's footfalls seem to ring with every step as he approached the controls, stopping before them as his gaze slowly rose up in nostalgic awe.

Tails extended gloved fingers over the console slowly, seemingly afraid to touch the master controls for the entire space colony and the super weapon housed within it. After a moment and lifetime of hesitation, he pressed a large, polygonal button at the top of a six-sided matrix surrounding a gridded green lens. The console hummed in response, lights blinking to life as if from a deep slumber, a holographic interface spinning up clockwise and appearing over the lens. It slowly rotated, with a top like that of a brilliant cut gemstone, the dark secrets it hid begging to be known once more.

Pausing, aware of the four sets of eyes following his every movement, the kitsune took in another long breath before pressing one of the light-forged facets, the shimmering side clicking in with only a touch. There was a beep of acknowledgement, followed by several more as windows began to wink onto the large screen. Power fluctuations, Operating Systems, Core wavelength, readings, irrelevant data, all these things and more opened as Tails pressed more and more buttons on the strange keypad.

Something caught his eye and he stopped clicking away, instead highlighting a directory file. Widening it, it opened into an active (at least, formerly) project listing. Four subfolders were present, Project Shadow, the most obvious, sat at the top with highest priority. But three more were present as well: Project Gizoid, Project Eclipse, and Project Gateway.

Tails' eyesbrows knitted in thought. Project Eclipse was obvious in its subject, but Gizoid and Gateway were still news to him, and he guessed to the others present as well. Both had been mentioned in Gerald's last log, though he still had found the references vague and could only guess as to their purpose, especially with the former.

Leaving the files be for now but making a mental note to read the reports later, the kitsune switched to security records instead, trying to find the last user in the system. Eggman and he had been right in their suspicions it seemed, for someone had been operating from this station up to only ten minutes ago. And yet, something was off. According to the console commands, whoever it was had not only been responsible for changing the password to Gerald's logs, but also had extracted them from the main archives and then distributed them with varying security clearance throughout the colony's network. But… That would imply the intruder had intentionally been feeding info to them all along.

Baffled, Tails scrolled down to the bottom of command logs, reading the last console lines. It seemed that whoever had been in the system had been rerouting a great deal of emergency power to both the Eclipse Cannon and a sealed area just below the weapon's core. Squinting, he noticed that a system of floodable chambers below said core had also been drained and opened section by section, opening a passage to the formerly inaccessible chamber. Despite himself, he couldn't help but be a little impressed by the clever solution.

Static flared. Five pairs of eyes shot to the source of the sound, the glass monitor looming over the Eclipse Cannon's controls. It flickered, once, twice, a solid pool with impossible ripples twisting about upon its surface. And then it was restored, files gone and replaced with a face smiling with evil glee into the camera. Pupils dilated, a gasp came from somewhere behind, but the kitsune spared none of them so much of a thought as he stared into the grinning face… of himself.

A minacious chuckle came forth in the form of audio from the screen, and Tails took an unconscious step back, tripping and falling into the hub's chair. He scrambled back to his feet as quickly as he could, but the slight was caught regardless, his evil twin's lips peeling back to reveal the tips of his canines. "So," said his clone, "we meet again, Miles the Fox."

"And who are you?" asked Shadow before the kitsune could even respond.

Cold eyes flicked across the screen, settling on the speaker. The black hedgehog caught just a twitch of an eyelid, a flicker of a dark emotion on the evil fox's face mingled with recognition before it settled back into that of a smug malefactor. Shadow, however, couldn't conclude why as he did not recall this doppelganger in turn, as obviously displayed by his question. That annoyed him, but he stuffed the emotion back down within the cauldron of his other feelings. He'd tried living with emotions before, and remembered all too well where that had got him. The ultimate life form had long since decided it was far better just to throw them all away.

Meanwhile, the gaze of the kitsune upon the screen had shifted back to his twin. "Oh?" said the clone, "You didn't tell your friends about me Miles? Decided not to mention our little bargain?"

Eyes narrowed. Distrust stained the air. Only Cosmo remained immune to this attack on the kitsune's character, prior knowledge helping but unnecessary to the absolute faith she had in Tails.

Said fox felt his hand clench reflexively to the accusation, staring coolly in turn back at his evil twin. "What do you want, Mephiles?"

The demon purred at his naming, his smile growing unnaturally wide and full of gleaming fangs. "The same thing I've always wanted."

"I've heard it before," said Tails boldly. "Revenge, right?"

Mephiles' eyes narrowed to slits. The kitsune could have sworn the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees from the icy glare, so ancient, so full of primordial hate. His breath stopped, and he felt his heart lurch for a moment, locked under a vast well of willpower.

Then he felt himself gasping for air, Mephiles having suddenly broken into hysterical laughter. His shrieking cackles was the sound of shattering glass, booming thunder, the sundering of mountains; a force both of nature and yet horribly mutated – utterly, irrevocably _wrong_. And as he laughed, his form shifted, cracking apart like polluted putty. His lips twisted, swelled, stretching together and melting seamlessly. Colors inverted and faded, edges splintering into razor-sharp points. When it was over, the five found themselves staring at a crystallized version of Tails in hues of ebony and gray, a hellish form that the real kitsune was all too familiar with.

"I know what you're here for," said the dark counterpart of the twin-tailed fox, his voice deeper and chillingly familiar to half of those present. The monitor beeped in tune, receiving commands from a remote location. "Answers. Why the ARK has come to Mobius. You needn't look any farther for that one – For it was indeed I who brought the colony into your world."

Eggman, who'd been silently listening up until now (probably a record), shifted in his seat, a bald brow going up a few centimeters. "Why?" he asked simply.

The shade didn't even spare the Doctor a glance. "So that you would find the truth," he said, "among other reasons. And the last of that truth, all of the answers, are right… Here." He pointed down, to a single folder that winked open under a clawed finger. It contained only two linked files, both video clips.

Tails blinked only once, the sole sound in the room the low beeps of data streams flowing in the distance below. Mephiles' clawed hand curled back, and without another word the doppelganger vanished from the screen. The kitsune stared at the monitor for a few more seconds, and then, as if in a trance, reached out and opened the first file. The screen shrunk away into a singularity in response, turning completely black. That black then faded to gray, then to the dim lighting of the very control room they stood within. Every other second, lines of static and primary color would flicker over the video, indicating that whatever they were watching was old indeed.

The camera zoomed in toward where they stood now, the control panel to the Ark's central systems. The room in the past was different, as the massive crystallized form of the Eclipse Cannon was absent from the center of the chamber. A little in front of the console stood two hulking humanoids, their three-fingered hands and bird feet sporting long talons and patches of scales. The brutes seemed to be chiseled out of muscle, black skin taut against sinew and bones, their limbs highlighted at the end by crimson. The most alien was the head – faceless, round orbs whose only feature was a pair of wide, golden, insectoid eyes.

These alien monsters were not alone either; for behind them at the console hovered one even more massive. A tattered robe hung from it, covered in the faded markings of something akin to a priest's garment. The being had no legs – It simply hovered in the air, the frayed fabric and innumerable sigils and trinkets overlaying it hanging down like eldritch pendulums. It also possessed claws much like the two creatures behind it, and from the back of its knotted head came a pair of wickedly long horns.

Audio kicked in, and the group almost instantly recognized the voice of Gerald Robotnik coming from the console. "-kind of power and ability to manipulate matter is a godsend, an example of what a true ultimate life form should be capable of. With the proper genetic harness to cap and control chaos energy, you could stave off cancer, aging, and all the biological timers that mortals like even he must endure. If only I had a body like his, a fetus, SOMETHING to work wi-"

The recording was silenced as a clawed finger pressed a large button on the holographic hemisphere. There was a dark chuckle, full of ancient power like Mephiles', yet unique in its own way. Where the doppelganger had a basic voice that hinted of muted but vast strength below the surface, the alien's basked in its own power, its vocals echoing with every syllable. "Interesting," spoke it, a hand reaching up to stroke an unseen face. "Four thousand years have passed since the destruction of the last civilization, and upon returning I find the product of that visit has been in the hands of this world's newest and greatest mind."

The robed form turned, Rouge, Cosmo, and Tails all gasping while only Eggman and Shadow stifling the mixture of surprise and revulsion. The being face now revealed to them was… monstrous. Truly, that could be the only word to describe it. The black flesh of the face was folded, twisted back in knotted layers that left rivets of deteriorated hide across a sunken skull. Upon the forehead, three gleaming eyes burned in the colors of lava, their only mars a single obsidian slit down the middle of each. "But I suppose the professor's tinkering with an outdated weapon is irrelevant. There are more important matters to attend to in the present."

The hovering being pointed to one of the landwalkers, it now occurring to Tails they were likely of the same species. "Return to the Comet," the floating one ordered, "and gather a hunting party. Find this 'Sky the Hedgehog' and bring him back to the ARK. If he resists, then bring his corpse instead."

The smaller alien made a sort of wet grunt, a gesture of acknowledgement, before turning to depart down the walkway that led out of the central control room from the past. Its apparent superior watched it leave with those blazing eyes before turn back to the console and stretching out a single digit to resume the log. Before it made contact with the console, however, the static that had been present in the background of the recording suddenly flared loudly, the video obscured by shades of flashing color. After a moment, the second file opened in its place upon the screen and began to play.

The new setting of this recording was not the central control room of the colony, but appeared to be some place back in the labs. Iron framework lined the walls, and circuit boards glimpsed out from beneath the floor in some places. The center of the room held a cushioned operating table, Gerald bent over a form on it and clearly agitated in his frantic movements. Behind the professor and slightly to the right was the same eldritch being from the last video, robed arms folded across the strange necklaces and chains adorning the alien's chest.

"Well?" asked he, for while the entity's gender remained questionable, the deep voice it produced seemed far more masculine than feminine. "What do you think? Will this body suffice?"

Gerald's shoulders twitched with thinly concealed rage as he backed away from the table. Another wave of shocked gasps came from the party, only Shadow remaining mute this time, and even his eyes widened which was as good as a scream from the black hedgehog. Lying across the cushioned surface of the counter was the shattered corpse of Sky the Hedgehog, gored from innumerable wounds, broken bones tearing free of sundered flesh.

"I think," said the professor, contained fury leaking out from under the calm surface of his voice, "That you are a monster without peer Black Doom, and I regret the day I ever pleaded for your help on this project."

Black Doom, as so the alien was named, was silent for perhaps a second. Then the eldritch monster's three eyes all closed as his swollen head bobbed in laughter. "Says one monster to another," rebutted the alien after a short chuckle, unfolding his arms. "I offered you my aid Gerald; all of my resources and power to be put toward this single end. But temptation is not a one way street; it is a bargain you and only you can willingly accept. When you took my hand, any blood to be spilled upon it was then smeared on yours as well."

"And how does this help that goal?" shouted the elder Robotnik, the anger simmering below bursting out in a violent torrent. "Life is the secret to the ultimate _life_ force! Life! Not death! Not a corpse! You brought me a broken body, devoid of any brain function or soul! This does not help my research in the slightest! It is cold, pointless, and unchangeable murder!"

The alien's laconic laughter echoed out again from no discernable point upon his anatomy. "So Self-Righteous," spoke the eldritch entity. "But not entirely correct."

Black Doom spread his left arm out in beckoning, two of his minions coming from beyond the camera's view. The hulking humanoids each carried large glass containers filled to the brim with an opaque crimson fluid so dark that it almost appeared black. Setting their cargo down carefully aside the body of Sky, the two retreated just as quickly beyond sight.

"Blood," said their master after a questioning glare from Gerald, "my own, in fact. I am very old, Gerald. Millennia of your planet's rotational cycles have passed by in my existence, and still I endure. The potency of that is distilled in the fluid that runs through my veins, along with the genetic template of all my offspring – the entire Black Arms race. Pump it into this body, and even the worst of its wounds will regenerate with time. I have little doubt as well that, with a some tinkering upon the base genome, you will be able to combine your theory of chaos energy control with the malleability of the Black Arms to create a true, unaging, ultimate life form."

The professor stared at Black Doom, the alien overlord twice his size, literally looming over him, his eyes and their emotions invisible behind the thick lenses of his glasses. Then, finally, with a dulling edge of quiet defiance: "That is still useless. There is no mind left in this mortal shell. An immortal husk is still just a husk, and I think not even you would deign to call such an 'ultimate' anything."

"Now you're just looking for excuses," said the supposed progenitor of the Black Arms. "I know of your work with the Gizoid, professor. You created an artificial soul, a free-willed mind, based on your granddaughter and imbued it into a mechanical being, a synthetic _framework_ four thousand years old. If you can do that, I hardly think that infusing a spirit of the same design into a brain-dead body can be anywhere near as great of a challenge."

Gerald went silent again, and for several seconds didn't even seem to breathe. Then, with the slow gait of a man weary of burden greater than his years, turned back to the corpse of Sky the Hedgehog. The professor gazed sadly down at the ruined form, extending a hand hesitantly forward and resting it on the dead Mobian's side. "Forgive me," he seemingly asked the body, a tear rolling down from beneath an opaque lens, "Because I will never forgive myself for this."

The scene began to fade again into static, but a single glint at the edge of the camera caught the corner of Tails' eye. Not even sure why, the kitsune stabbed the freeze button, only waiting for a couple of seconds as the image clarified. In that time, however, ice froze in his gut as the source of the flicker, a shape lingering in shadows of the far side of the room, resolved into a solid figure.

"Oh no…"

The form was different than he had seen before. A pale shade of purple tinted the majority of his crystal body, with a long, pointed tail and stalactite dreads hanging from a wide head. It reminded Tails somewhat of Knuckles, but there was no mistaking the eyes. The kitsune knew the cold calculation from those slitted, wide-set, pus-yellow irises regardless of the shadowy form they took.

Tails simply stared at Mephiles the Dark; frigid, emotionless, and present at the conception of the idea to reanimate the dead grandfather of Sonic the Hedgehog… The body of whom would serve as the vessel for Shadow, the ultimate life form, infused with the blood of Black Doom, a soul copied from Maria Robotnik, and designed by her grandfather Gerald.

Plans within plans. Wheels within wheels.

The whirr of hardware knocked the kitsune out his stunned stupor from the rapid fire revelations delivered in the last five minutes, windows suddenly popping up all over the monitor with alarming frequency. The segmented lights of the enormous orbs floating above them beginning to slowly spin and pulse, bars fluttered across the screen with power fluctuations resonating throughout the station.

"Wha- What's going on?" asked Cosmo worriedly, having also broken from the trance induced by the truth of fifty years ago.

Tails was already trying to figure that out. With his fingers flying across the interface, it didn't take him long. "The Eclipse Cannon… is preparing to fire?"

With the lands of his future Empire endangered, Eggman snapped out of it as well. "What's the target?" he demanded, driving his mecha right up beside the console.

Pressing a few more buttons, the kitsune brought up the targeting system and checked the coordinates. In that moment, every other revelation and fear he'd felt the entire day went dead in comparison to the total horror that gripped him as he stared at the small house nestled in the lake-side foothills.

His house.

…His flower.


	11. Hour of the Cyclone

Far above in the darkened skies over Mobius, the ARK moved for the first time of its own volition since its arrival days before. The old derelict shifted in orbit towards its designated target, massive machinery twisting and coiling as the cone-shaped cannon began to open up in deadly bloom. Deep within the heart of the colony, the lights upon the four globes spun faster and faster, seemingly in tune with Tails' panic as he typed away frantically, desperately trying to do something, _anything_. Yet his attempts bore no fruit, the Eclipse Cannon having already finished charging its primary and secondary energy cycles as it rapidly approached the final firing sequence. Behind and in the Cyclone, Cosmo watched worriedly, still ignorant to the peril her unborn child was in.

"Shadow," asked Rouge, "can't you do anything to help them?" The bat indicated over to where the kitsune stabbed buttons erratically beside Eggman, who had joined his fellow genius in aid, yet the pair still making no impact. The black hedgehog, however, seemed stunned for the first time since… Well, ever, as far as the jewel thief could remember. Eyes narrowing after no response was forthcoming, she marched over to his side, leveling her face with one of the ultimate life form's triangular ears. "SHADOW!"

The hedgehog suddenly snapped alert, his face swiveling as his red eyes paused on hers. Then, without a word, he strode forward and around the console chair. Pushing aside Ivo and Miles, gloved fingers began typing with crisp precision in place of frantic jabs. "The cannon's energy levels are already near critical level," said Shadow, "Safeguards won't let you use the killswitch now, and even if you bypassed them the discharge would probably blow up both us and half the colony."

"There's got to be something we can do!" Tails practically yelled, his unwounded namesake waving about wildly, its injured counterpart competing by performing some limp twitches. "I- I can't give up! I refuse to!"

"I didn't tell you to," the ultimate life form responded, surprisingly and almost chilling calm considering what he'd just learned about his birth. Still, this was also the same person who had decided and later attempted to carry out killing an innocent girl almost as casually as one might pick out produce at the grocery. "The firing coordinates have not yet been reached. If you're fast, you might still be able to alter the trajectory."

The kitsune paused for a heartbeat, his mathematical mind trying to beat rampant emotions into submission and restore rational order. Then quick as Sonic might've been, sped back to his place at the console and hammered away at the controls. Eggman joined him on the other side, and with Shadow still pointing out flaws and advantages they could use in the software. Between the three of them, the impossible became feasible: The ARK began to stray from its originally set course.

Yet would it be enough? Outside, the Eclipse Cannon had fully opened, huge arcs of electricity leaping from the metal pylons to the central focusing rod, lights bursting with blinding radiance up the weapon of mass destruction. As the energy was forced into the tip, a ball of sheer power formed and grew to half the size of the colony, and with a final roar burst out as beam of focused blue light.

The azure streak blazed across the heavens, rings of energy igniting and burning off from it as it tore through each layer of the atmosphere. The top of the sea steamed as the light rushed past, straight as an arrow as it skimmed only a few thousand feet above the water, before finally passing back up through the atmosphere and into space beyond.

All this they watched from the central control room, yet Tails dared not release his breath until the last of the deadly beam passed into the abyss beyond Mobias. It had been close, but they'd managed to avoid hitting the planet at all, managing to turn the space colony somewhere around sixty to seventy degrees before firing, skimming the atmosphere but not actually hitting any non-gaseous mass. Though he would have missed his house and what precious things lay still there, he really didn't want to hit some other population center or even fire it into the ocean. He'd no idea the cannon was capable of in side effects alone; doing irreparable damage to the crust, erupting volcanoes, or causing who knew what else global calamities.

Now that the danger had passed, and the adrenaline began to release its iron clasps, Tails took a moment of careful reflection. Why had the cannon suddenly fired? And why at his house? Had Mephiles changed his mind and tried to destroy the kitsune's unborn child anyway? Or was he, as always, prodding people into a certain course of foreseeable action that matched his desires? This latest scenario seemed the most likely, yet Tails found that he once again had no way to go against it; only to keep acting as peril dictated and hope that things would work out for the best as they had last time he'd dealt with this weaver of fates.

Soberly staring at the screen, Eggman's heroic counterpart wracked his brain for ideas on where to go from here. When one finally came, he didn't care for it much, but saw little else to do at the moment.

"Something's out of place," said Tails, pressing a key several more times as he zoomed in on the region he was looking at before. "Look here, below the cannon's core. The flood gates that ran the rivers of coolant through the area have all been drained, opening up this large chamber below. That's too sudden to be coincidental- It's a good possibility something important or at least relevant is down there. I'm going to go check it out."

"And what, leave us behind?" said Eggman mockingly, already having slipped back into his normal, jeering self. "Real hard to keep up with you in an iron suit, tin man."

The kitsune smiled back at the Doctor almost sincerely, the grin of a man with a deck of aces up each sleeve. "Not everything has to be a contest, Eggman."

"Oh, but it does!" he exclaimed. "A race to the cannon's core then… Hmm, why does that sound familiar?"

Below and to the side, it was Rouge this time who grinned. "At least you're not rushing there to fix your own mistake this time Doctor."

Ivo deflated a little, his hairless brows forming an ugly knot. Bruising his ego seemed to be becoming a running gag for the day.

Meanwhile, Tails had finished mounting the Cyclone, and was gently settling back into his seat. Making a few short configurations, he turned the walker around and took a few steps back toward the walkway before looking back to his Cosmo. "Do you trust me?" he asked both simply and innocuously.

The seedrian blinked. "Of… Course." She returned, a tad thrown off by the question, her curiosity quickly climbing.

His grin going all the wider, the kitsune yanked back on the control yoke before shoving it forward, the Cyclone responding by taking a leap of faith and plummeting off the platform, Cosmo letting out a shriek of surprise before they dropped through the data streams and were soon swallowed by the darkness even farther beneath.

Back up above, the remaining member of the group all peered over the edge. "Well…" said Eggman after a second, "I don't know about you two, but I'm walking; hordes of GUN bots, lava monsters, and escaped experiments be damned."

"Um… yeah." Said Rouge, her wit for once robbed of her. "I'll do that too."

Shadow was already heading back down the walkway, quietly laughing. "Just like old times, huh?"

Already far below, still falling like a metal boulder, Tails was laughing with childish joy as the wind rustled through his fur and whipped around his bangs. A look back sobered him up though from the seedrian's distress, and with the flip of a toggle the mecha began to whine. The legs pulled back up, splitting into their base components as the wings reformed on either side. In only a handful of seconds, the relocated engine burst back to life, the walker having completed its transformation back into plane form.

As the now reborn Tornado 3 leveled off into a looping spiral around the descending crystal and metal rod that was the Eclipse Cannon's center, the kitsune switched on the auto-pilot as they continued downward, turning to face the plant girl. "I would have flown by myself down this way last time," he said, "but the goal was to get the Master Emerald to the core, not just reach it."

Cosmo's look of confusion made his ears droop. "Tails, I don't even know half of what just happened in the last five minutes," she said. "I know it's not your intention to keep me in the dark, but I- I'm lost. Between those records about creating Shadow-san and you suddenly panicking…"

The kitsune understood her bafflement. He still wasn't sure of the significance of the Black Arms or Mephiles' tampering with the timeline, but could still help her in one regard. "Someone tried to target our house with the Eclipse Cannon," he said simply, turning back to the Tornado's controls.

"What?" said the seedrian struck with shock, her eyes dilating slightly.

"It's alright now," he continued quickly. "We averted the blast; it fired off into space. Theoretically, it'll probably be a long time before it hits anything, and that anything's most likely to be a star. Still, something's going on down near the cannon core, and I'll bet Mephiles has something to do with it, if he's not already there."

Cosmo's eyes widened slightly instead this time. "But… If he is… What do we do when we find him?"

Tails blinked. He hadn't considered that. Quite like the last time he'd faced his doppelganger in fact, he'd spent his whole time just chasing the fiend and never once thought about what he'd do upon catching up. Was that how his evil twin was manipulating him? Getting him to act before thinking?

The kitsune shook his head free of the 'What ifs'. It hadn't been a minute earlier he'd had these same thoughts. Like Shadow before him had discovered, he was not only realizing but applying the knowledge that brooding would solve none of his problems. And like Sonic, he would just keep living the way he always had, regardless of other's attempts to direct him.

The rest of the way down, Tails and Cosmo remained mostly quiet, the only sound the hum of the Tornado's engine. The walls began to change as they went lower and lower, cracks and webbing appearing across the metal, and a strange organic residue growing on the cannon's spire. Eventually the hole widened out, the plane circling into a wide chamber of rainbow-hewn walls. The cannon core was present; a massive fleshy sac overgrown with strange pseudopods that ended in a jagged funnel above the iron-wrought replica of the Master Emerald's shrine.

All of this was alien to both Cosmo and Tails. The fox himself had never actually entered the core, working to help his friends from higher up during the fall of the ARK. From the diagnostics, however, he knew of at least one thing that had changed. For the center of the great room had once held a large, disc-shaped pool of water, fed on either side by two rivers of coolant flowing from somewhere higher up in the colony. Now, though, it had been replaced by an open chasm; the streams connecting to it run dry.

The kitsune circled around once, taking in all that he saw. Then, with a dramatic swerve, dived down into the hole. Great lengths of pipes and tubing ran down the shaft all around them as they sped downward, illuminated in the total dark only by the lights emitted from the Tornado's console and HUD. The air was dank, thick with moisture, matting the kitsune's fur. It only got colder as they traveled ever deeper, and Tails found himself shivering.

A light finally came into view in the distance, Tails reflexively pulling back on the brakes. As it loomed closer, he activated the transformation control, the Tornado spinning into walker mode as it became the Cyclone. There was a jolt as the engine switched directions from behind to below, the momentum splaying the fox and seedrian across the front of their cockpits. Recovering, they looked around and found the shaft had expanded five times in width, the air so humid that a chill fog blanketed almost everything. Iron-wrought plumbing snaked across the walls, a single platform rising up from below proving to be the source of illumination from the strip lights running around its perimeter. Around it, the darkness still went somehow farther down, continuing its seemingly impossible descent.

The Cyclone touched down hard on the platform, despite the booster's efforts. Both passengers remained seated this time, still looking around with confusion. Even Tails was not sure where they were, the ARK's maps had said relatively nothing about what lay below the cannon's core.

The sound of metal grinding on metal drew the attention of the two lovers with snaps of the head to the foggy air above. It didn't take much for Tails to realize they were not alone, aiming his weaponry towards the source of the noise, hearing his heart beat in his ears as he waited otherwise silently for an enemy to show itself.

He got his wish.

A waterfall of thick ooze fell down a few yards away, splattering the area around it with blue sludge. The Cyclone jumped back, it weapons trained as the stuff quivered restlessly. The kitsune's stomach turned as he watched it twist about, objects within the blob shifting about like organs. He saw huge rods of metal in the shape of bones twist about, connecting together into a twisted skeleton. Six jewel gleamed darkly in the framework, their sickening luster unmistakable for the fakes they were. Around the metal cartilage a nightmare formed, all long, gangly limbs growing from the and pulling it up from the floor, tentacles growing from the mass, a long scorpid tail growing from the back with huge fins. And in the front, a mask of iron bobbed to the front; a robotic face with two massive green eyes aligned vertically and three more trailing off on the side. It split open wide, filled with metal teeth the size of daggers, and Artificial Chaos let loose a terrifying roar.

Instinct took over. Tails shifted the Cyclone away, blue bursts of energy launching from the muzzle over Cosmo's head and crashing into the enormous machine-horror. The blasts did virtually nothing, blowing off a few chunks of the ooze which quickly reformed. The artificial god responded in kind, the tentacles on its back growing to enormous proportions and lancing out to impale the mecha. The walker went to jump again, but wasn't as fast, two of the speeding appendages slashing along the side, leaving huge gouges on it.

At the peak of the jump, the kitsune activated the boosters, buying him a moment's reprieve. At least, so he thought. Instead, the oozing abomination let out another roar, its eight eyes crackling with power as they all fired beams of destructive power in random directions. One of the central eyes might have vaporized half the mecha and its occupants on the spot, had a glimmering green shield once again deflected the deadly eye lasers.

Tails dropped the mecha down and turned back to Cosmo, finding the plant girl standing up in her seat, her hands extended to either side. The shield then expanded, thinning out and enveloping the vehicle in a warmly glowing shield. Artificial Chaos made let out a low choke of flapping gunk, what the fox took to be a growl of suspicion and annoyance, its tentacles retreating as it studied them. The mechanic, however, was not going to let the opportunity so easily go to waste, opening up his volkan cannon as the Cyclone began side-stepping in a strafing run.

Again the energized particles peppered the asymmetrical form of Chaos' clone, the attack once more showing no visible impact on the monster, its wounds closing as quickly as they formed. Steam hissed between the iron sheets of its mouth, and the behemoth crouched low on its many legs before hurling itself upward, intending to brings its bulk down in full force upon those that opposed it. The blue ooze struck Cosmo's shield with the force of a train, sending the Cyclone spinning like a pinball across half the platform.

"Why doesn't anything work?" shouted Tails in frustration, urging his mecha to its feet as the shield faded, Artificial Chaos already preparing for another attack. "Sonic said he defeated the real Chaos 6 by smashing its core… But this thing doesn't even have one! Just that hideous fa-"

Simultaneous struck with insight and another laser from the robotic ooze's eyes, Tails blinked as the Cyclone shuddered; smoke billowing out from the gouges on its side. Throwing the walker into a run, he narrowly dodge the stab from the creature's freakishly long tail, carefully tagging its face with his painting laser. A single blue blast shot from the Cyclone's blaster, streaking in circles before smashing into the Robot's upper eye. Artificial Chaos let out another mighty roar, this one of anger and fury, its remaining seven sensors tracking the mecha as it turned around to attempt another shot.

The amorphous form of the gigantic form shifted, its face pulling back into the thick mass as its metal framework once again shifted and realigned. The innumerable limbs pulled back into a central mass, leaving only a massive blob the size of a cottage. Suddenly, bright pinpricks of light appeared on its shifting, twitchy edges, growing in number more and more until it looked like a aquatic Christmas tree. Each spark suddenly blew outward then, hundred on miniature lances going in a three hundred and sixty degree sphere of directions.

Cosmo threw up another shield of emerald light, but she was already tired from the last, only able to produce a small barrier that covered the upper half of the cyclone. A dozen tiny spears pierced through the Cyclone's legs, yet the mecha still somehow stood, not even buckling as they withdrew and pulled back into the central mass. And for a moment, there was silence.

The bulk of Artificial Chaos twitched, its mechanical face coming to the fore and emerging as it peered about, looking for the ruined corpses of its foes. Instead, it was met with a second blast of blue energy, it lower primary eye blown out. Tails smiled victoriously as the abomination let out a shriek, its form twisting out of control as tentacles burst out and around, thrashing insanely. Yet his triumph was shortlived, as the metal face detonated, the whole mass of the ooze blowing apart in a violet wave of semi-solid shower whose force alone threw the Cyclone once again across the platform. Shrapnel flew everywhere with the force of the detonation, a limb containing one of the artificial emeralds blowing clean through one of the legs, the walker finally tumbling as it skidded across the platform, spinning toward the edge.

As the abyss neared, two forms jumped free from the plane/walker hybrid just before it the engine finally gave in with a whine, the front half of the Cyclone exploding in a final, glorious blaze, giving a final burst that threw the mecha off the platform and down into the descending shaft surrounding the floor. Cosmo, dazed, struggled to her knees, instantly panicking when she didn't see Tails. The seedrian ran for the edge where his creation had fallen, pulling her head over and shrieking "Tails!" upon finding him dangling from a pipe a few feet below.

The kitsune, to his credit, managed to smile, though his peril was quite dire. His tail still damaged, he could not fly back to safety, and he could quite obviously not hold on forever. Cosmo put her hand down to help, but it remained out of reach, still at least a good two feet above his current grip. He closed his eyes a moment to think, but the sound of another explosion caused them to open wide.

Above and around them, the scenery hadn't taken too well to the battle. Pipelines sheered in half by eye beams were falling apart, chunks of metal finally succumbing to rust and age with a final push over the edge. Something potent must have been going through one of them, as a tangled mess of plumbing had blown off the wall, debris falling right toward them. It was Tails' turn, now, to scream his love's name, adding "MOVE!" right after.

She looked up with a fright, paralyzed by panic, her hands held up as a energy shield thinner than cheese appeared meekly above. The wreckage tore through it like paper, miraculously missing the seedrian as pieces smashed into the ground around her. Tails, however, was not so lucky – a pipe connecting directly with his head and sending his world spinning into black as he himself spun downward, falling into darkness as somewhere above a girl screamed his name.


	12. A Light in the Darkness

Black. It colored every sense, binding him in nothingness. Cobwebs knitted around the frayed edges of the mind; gagging thought, stifling consciousness.

There: shades of gray. Color leaked behind the veil of his eyelids. He could open them, but why? The dark was blinding, but comfortable. The light stung, piercing the haze of apathy. He could just keep swimming in the darkness for a little while longer…

No. Something- Can't think. It was important. Need to find it, to get out of the fog. He pushed up on the invisible blanket, a child fighting against the bed sheets. The movement was slow, drugged, drunken. Still, had to fight; had to remember.

The drapes on his face opened, a blue flare burning him. They slammed shut again, then opened a fraction, films of liquids blurring the sight beyond. He raised his right… What were they? Hands? Yes, one of those- rubbing the closed windows to his world. He pulled up the blinds again, slowly, adjusting to the light.

There was a low hum, constant, the sound of machinery. Beeps and other ambient noises sounded in the distance. He rose and instantly regretted it, a knife embedding itself in his skull. The other hand went up too, and regretted that as well, white fire burning the muscles of his arm from within.

Did he scream? He might of, couldn't tell through the pain. It still hurt to think too, but pictures were beginning to come back, gears turning. He panted, blinking in the light. Iron framework was all around, beams thicker than a room running both horizontal and vertical around him. Where-

Memory kicked in. Tails instantly went alert, looking wildly about. The ARK! He was on the ARK! But- Yes, he'd fallen. Looking up, the kitsune saw only a long passage that disappeared into shadows far above. But where to? Parts of the Cyclone lay warped and dented around him, yet he didn't see-

"Cosmo!" the fox shouted, jumping to his feet and promptly falling back over from vertigo. Stars lingered in his view, colored blots jumping about like bouncy balls. The kitsune shut his eyes until everything stopped spinning, then once more, slowly this time, stood up. Glancing around, he saw no sign of the seedrian, and only then remembered she had not fallen with him off the platform.

Still concerned, but his fears somewhat relieved, Tails then moved to inspecting himself. Raising his right hand this time, he gingerly felt the back of his head again, quickly encountering a swollen lump. No wonder he had such a splitting headache- it was probably from that bar that had cracked him in the head and caused him to fall down. For all he knew, it could have caused a concussion as well.

He traced his fingers past his bangs and ear, sliding the tips down over his left arm. A burning sensation with awkwardly angled flesh greeted the contact, his hand clenching over the pained area as if to strangle the source of his hurt. So his arm was broken too then. It made sense, he'd had to have landed on something after undoubtedly banging about during the long fall down. Better a limb than another blow to the head, anyway.

Sitting back down on a piece of the Tornado 3's hull, the kitsune gingerly pulled his left arm onto his knee, flipping open the small computer on his wrist. After about a dozen or so taps, the small console beeped an affirmation of its command, Tails closing it and leaning his head back against the shattered carcass of his plane. Even with the message, it would be hours before Amy managed to round up a rescue party to come get them, much less find them on the derelict. The communicators did have built-in locator devices, but navigating the convoluted colony was still difficult, as he and Eggman had already been reminded of.

Despite this, there wasn't a point in being idle. It wasn't the fox's legs that were broken, after all. Getting back to his feet, Tails squinted about in the dim light. He had to be very low, likely near where the base of the Eclipse Cannon met the ARK's bulk. Aside from the wall of the cannon's spire, however, all other directions appeared to be open, vanishing into the darkness beyond his field of view. Shrugging to a nonexistent companion, he picked the direction farthest away from the cannon's side and started walking.

As he journeyed over uneven metal surfaces and avoided footfalls, the kitsune pondered all that had happened over the last few hours. Mephiles had torn a rift through time and space, sending the ARK from Earth's orbit to that of Mobius. He likely did this to lure him and Cosmo aboard, and perhaps even Eggman or Shadow as well. And, being the clairvoyant eldritch entity that the doppelganger was, Mephiles had been correct: the ghost-dwelling halls of the colony had been too threatening to ignore.

But why? Ever elusive were the demon's goals. As always, what had he to gain? He revealed the origin of Shadow, set Artificial Chaos and other minions after them, and tried to obliterate the fox's house from orbit. It was as if Mephiles was working at cross-purposes with himself. One minute he'd help, another try to harm or slow them down. Carrots and sticks for an agenda that made no logical sense to the kitsune. What could an entity that ancient want from mere mortals like him and his friends?

Tails hopped down another ledge, taking pause on the smooth metal floorboards. Peering ahead, he noticed a rather large object a short distance away. Faintly illuminated by the floor-set lights that had guided him thus far, there appeared to be a very large set of concentric circle embossed on an equally large platform.

Curious, the twin-tailed fox moved forward at a quicker pace, stepping up a small dais that led to the top of the platform. Getting on his knees, he used his good hand to run a finger over the largest of the three rings, a thick layer of dust coming off with it. Beneath was a strange array of circuitry and engravings, the faintest of lights flickering through the conductive traces.

A deep hum caused the kitsune to snap to attention, stumbling backwards as the air in front of him crackled and somehow grew even darker despite the lack of illumination. Streams of violet light tore through the air from no source, a tear sundering apart reality and opening a space beyond this dimension. Tails knew it all too well, he had traveled through it thrice before, and was coldly aware of the being who created such wounds in reality. Staggering to his feet, he prepared for a confrontation with the worst of his foes.

The void snapped hungrily at the air, the azure pulses streaming from the black pit beyond. With an angry hiss, it popped close, depositing a single entity in its place. But as Tails stared at this kneeling individual, he realized quite quickly that it was not Mephiles the Dark.

"Who- Who are you?" asked the confused fox.

The figure stood up; a hedgehog of pale fur, neon-lit runes running across his gloves and boots. Golden eyes met Tails' in the dark, reflected in the glow of the Red Chaos Emerald clasped tightly in the traveler's hand.

"My name… is Silver."

* * *

_TO BE CONTINUED IN PROJECT GATEWAY_


End file.
